Ah yes, Rocky IV, aka 'Rocky Balboa faces off against the oppressive Cold War machine SINGLEHANDED! Or should I say two-handed, with fists. And sled-lifting.
This is silly stuff, cartoonish, hilarious, especially with the 'Hearts on Fire' song. But actually this is what makes it even more of a piece of suspiciously brilliant propoganda. It's montage in the most Stalin sense of the word. As the critic Slavoj Zizek pointed out in his movie "Perverts Guide to Cinema", Stalin loved musicals, and this if nothing else is a musical sequence showing how hard work and dedication can get results and make characters feel the burn. Only in this case Rocky - who, of course, has to burnish himself of all of his Rich-Man trappings following the Death-by-Boxing of Apollo Creed by Ivan Drago and has to leave behind his mansion and talking dog (sigh, yes, remember that?) and become a rugged man of the wilderness.
Ivan, meanwhile, becomes a victim of the very montage that Stalin once loved to see from his Soviet propoganda pieces. Now ROCKY, not IVAN, is the one who will use the lay of the land, and things like sleds and horse carts and chopping down trees with axes SERIOUSLY WHAT THE FUCK, LIKE STEPHEN KING DOESN'T CHOP DOWN ENOUGH TREES... sorry, got carried away.
At any rate, this is the first in a series - inspired by the great Co-Host 3000 who used to do this ever Friday but stopped for some reason (maybe the closing of Spill had something to do with it I suppose). And what better way to start than with shamelessly (or shamefully depending on your POV) Nationalist tripe of the most hilarious order.
About FILMS: going, criticism, craft, festivals, etc, by Mr. Whiplash (aka Jack Gattanella).
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