"Even Rocky Had A Montage..."

When watching Rocky IV, it's hard to believe that the original 1976 movie was a multiple Oscar winner and highly respected sports drama. Come 1985 and all that has dissipated. With the stepping stone of Rocky III, which carefully balanced the commercial, audience pleasing, pantomime-esque fluff with the more serious character drama, writer/director Sly Stallone has crossed over into the world of unabashedly manipulative, crowd-pleasing bullshit.

Cue Dolph Lundgren as an unbeatable, boxing, killing machine (poor Carl Weathers). Then Sly made Dolph's character a Ruskie (the ultimate evil in the Cold War mid-80's). And because a movie synopsis is rarely more perfectly simple than this, a darnfangled script was discarded in favor of a few brief dramatc scenes and a shit load of montages to display the passage of time. Rocky IV has FIVE of them!!! Now, they've always had at least two in this franchise (the training sequence and the 15 round fight sequence) but you can add a running sequence (instead of the steps of Philadelphia City Hall, Rocky runs up a bloody mountain) a flashback montage and even a James Brown, pre-fight montage!

But it works. It's rousing. It's exhilarating. And it's gripping. It works on the same level as dumb Jerry Bruckheimer movies when they're working well, like Top Gun or Armageddon. Your brain knows you're being manipulated and to cheer the good guys, but in your heart, you plainly don't give a monkeys. It's a shame Stallone didn't direct for another 20 years after this as he knows what he's doing.