Review of Rocky IV (1985) by Calvinbrine — 07 Nov 2022

This movie had POTENTIAL, it set things up GREAT with the death of Apollo Creed, and then all of it was squandered. It used to be that boxing was only a heavy factor of these movies, not something that hogged all focus. Now, it's all boxing, talking about boxing, or training for boxing. All of the other stuff about life that was present before is pretty much gone. Creed's death is a good way to set up events to come, but from between there and the face-off between Rocky and Draco, a whole lot of nothing happened. Just a bunch of montages, changing locations, and a couple heart felts between Rocky and his wife. The grand final duel didn't feel like a final duel. I mean, I could certainly TELL there wouldn't be anything after this, but nothing felt like it'd been built up properly. It's just: Draco kills Apollo, Rocky beats Draco. We get to see barely any more of the Russian Terminator before his duel with Rocky, just a press conference and some training/steroids. The ending doesn't feel EARNED in the slightest. It just feels like Rocky got buff and then got revenge. This movie has so much filler, it could've been a tv episode. Except if this WAS a short, then Apollo's death would've felt like he'd been robbed.

And yet despite all this, my dad tells me this movie ended the cold war. I guess the russians were so discouraged by how empty their rocky movie was that they gave up.