Here’s a special review of one of my favorite films of all time, Rocky 4. Now, the movie opens with Rocky defeating Clubber Lang, and Rocky and Apollo’s famous scene in the ring. Rocky is a famous, wealthy boxing legend who has a new friendship with his former rival Apollo Creed. This film starts out with a charming scene with Paulie’s birthday celebration. He get’s a robot who is apparently fully functional and even brings him a cake. It can talk as well. Now that was 1985, it’s 2010. Do you know anyone today who owns a robot?

At this time, who is left for Rocky to fight in this movie, just Ivan Drago. Now he’s not your ordinary boxer, he’s an inhuman, russian monster jacked up on steroids who wields a super punch of 2150 lbs of pressure per square inch. That is the scientific equivalent of being hit by a train. Apollo sees Drago’s news conference and being as proud and arrogant as ever, challenges Drago. It is clear in the fight that Apollo is over the hill and washed up and once Drago starts, he catches him with a left hook which not only ends the fight, but also his life.

While the chaos ensues, Drago coolly gives a victory speech, adding to the sinister nature of his character. His speech ends with his psychopathic and callous quote, “If he dies, he dies.”
Rocky, then begins to play the predictable role of the avenger and gives up his championship belt to fight Drago. Here’s the catchy part, he fights him in Russia. After the series of badass training sequences that involve Rocky chopping down trees, sprinting in deep snow, and climbing mountains, the fight begins with procommunist fanfare, Drago utters his famous line, “I must break you,” and the fight begins. During the fight, this is a true story, Dolph Lundgren (who played Drago) and Sylvester Stallone (Rocky) choose to actually throw real punches. Both men spent time in the hospital. Stallone spent 4 days in the hospital after his ribcage was punched in. The injury is permanent. Pretty authentic and cool huh? Of course Rocky, who once had his endurance insulted by the short russian guy with the funny hat (Drago’s trainer), beats Drago in 15 rounds. Now here’s a fact, when Apollo fought Drago, Apollo didn’t last 2 rounds. In the meantime, Rocky lasted 15, and won. Now Rocky took 100,000 times the beating Apollo took, it’s like the worst beating of all time, yet, Rocky manages to shock the world by going the distance. It’s a question we’ll never know the answer too. Afterwards, Rocky gives a predictable and corny victory speech. Now even though it was unnecessary, it brings peace between Russia and America. So this movie ended the Cold War. If that’s not completely awesome, tell me what is.

The thing that really makes this movie, is the montages. What could be better than combining the cheesiest songs of the 80s and mixing them with training montages. This is the only movie in which Bill Conti did not compose the music. The original “Rocky” score is gone and the music is done by Vince DiCola. For those of you who don’t know, this guy did the music for the Transformers, providing it with more of a action packed punch. In a 91 minute movie, I actually counted. There were 21 minutes of montage sequences. Go ahead, count it. That’s roughly a quarter percent of the movie dedicated to montages. It was still cool though.

My final thoughts are these. This movie almost has nothing in common with the previous Rocky movies, but then again, it’s a welcome change. He is in a far away country, out of his element. He becomes stronger than ever before. Seriously, watch “Training Montage” and try to prove me wrong. Plus he has that fire inside him to avenge the death of Creed, he is out with a mission to beat the odds, and rather than climbing the Rocky Steps, He’s climbing the Rocky Mountains (okay that was bad, but this film was shot in Wyoming).

The point is that, the fight scenes are entertaining as hell, the plot is that of a typical Hollywood action great, two great action hero personalities are in this movie, and two and a half decades worth of parodies take after this movie, including Family Guy and Chuck. Real men like Rocky 4.