Rocky IV director’s cut review: Stallone launches a fierce, flawed redux

There is nothing inherently wrong with Rocky iv, an ultra-marketed 1980s beauty flick. Sylvester Stallone wisely capitalized on the anti-Russian swagger of Rambo: First Blood Part II to bring Western audiences a crowd-pleasing Cold War underdog story. The enemy: Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren), the pugilist and pulverizer savior of the Soviet Union. “Whatever it hits, it destroys it,” boasts Drago’s ashtray-voiced handler. When the Russian kills Rocky’s former adversary turned best friend Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) in an exhibition match, it’s clear an all-American knuckle dinner is coming, and Stallone serves it up with plenty of MTV flash ( which was the style at the time).

Rocky iv it is a significant film of its time. It remains the highest grossing entry in the franchise. It’s not anyone’s favorite Rocky movie, but no one in the history of the world has started watching it and turning it off. This is a scientifically proven fact. And it is a universally recognized truth that not a single person on the planet has ever needed a director’s cut.

Except for Stallone.

Given its remarkably lean 91-minute narrative, Rocky ivIt’s more of a training montage than a movie. So when Stallone announced an “extended director’s cut” last September, the idea sounded like something for a SNL digital short. But the actor-director was deadly serious, and now he is too. Rocky iv. This once-eye-catching touchstone of ’80s cinema has morphed into a strangely grim rumination on the warrior’s code. Visually and tonally, it is a very different experience. And let’s get this straight: those “42 minutes of new footage” promised in the press release are there, but at 93 minutes (with credits), it also means a third of the movie that has been a mainstay of cable since the start of the show. The glasnost era is gone. This is not your bearded Gen X uncle Rocky iv.

The original Rocky made Stallone a global superstar. It won the 1976 Academy Award for Best Film in Network, All the president’s men and Taxi driver. All of the sequels have been snapshots of Stallone’s career at the time they were made: Rocky ii It is an overnight success struggling with the demands of sudden fame; Rocky iii deal with the loss of hunger that afflicts champions / stars at the top of their game; Rocky v trace the inevitable decline of the champion; Rocky Balboa refutes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s claim that there are no second acts in American life; and the Creed Duology deals with the importance of legacy. Rocky iv … it’s really not about much of anything. Apollo and Rocky are looking toward impending retirement, but the former’s inner fears that Russia will take over the boxing world with lab-created supermen overlooks any meaningful introspection. There’s a hint of John Henry folk legend in there, but at its core it’s a vengeance flick fermented by some saccharine verbiage about Americans and Russians learning to see themselves as human beings (that the entire Politburo stands up and claps). at the end of the movie).

So is the new version of Stallone, nicknamed Rocky IV: Rocky vs. Drago, an improvement? In several cases, absolutely. As it is shown in a re-making of documentary currently available on YouTube, Stallone is appalled at the number of missed punches that made it to the 1985 theatrical cut. He is proud of the ferocity of the final fight (as he should be considering that a series of punches from Lundgren to the chest left him with a swollen heart that brought him to ICU), but in today’s HD world, those occasional puffs are stunning. obvious. On the recut, almost all hits land with a realistic thud (although some of the absurdly loud sound design has actually been lowered).

Stallone also stepped back and inserted numerous alternate takes that completely alter Apollo’s tragic arc. Facing Drago is no longer an act of stupid arrogance, but rather an obligation, made clear in Duke’s eulogy in which Creed’s trainer and default father eloquently defend their fighter’s fatal decision. “The warrior has the right to choose his way of life and his way of dying.” This echoes a newly added moment in Creed’s fight with Drago where Rocky pleads with his friend, “Don’t do this to me.” “I’m doing this for me,” Apollo snaps. This gives Rocky’s inevitable showdown with Drago a deeper purpose than revenge; he’s also obeying the warrior code, and he doesn’t care if everyone, including Adrian, thinks it’s an act of suicide.

How this squares with Drago’s reconfigured bow is tricky. In the theatrical cut, Drago’s belated rebellion against his handlers felt like the act of a petulant child (“I fight for me!”). In this version, Drago is portrayed as an awkwardly willing participant in Russian propaganda. He tries to answer questions at the press conference, but is quickly interrupted by his chat manager. There is a human being under the robotic facade and, thanks to Creed ii, we know what your endurance will ultimately cost you. Unfortunately, Stallone suppressed Brigitte Nielsen’s outburst of outrage where the media mocked her candid claims of death threats against her husband. There may be a slightly more human dimension to Drago in the director’s cut (his bewildered perspective during James Brown’s rendition of “Living in America” ​​is like a five-year-old lost in a carnival funhouse ), but Nielsen’s apparatchik has been reduced to a heartless cartoon. This feels like unfair compensation.

What Stallone can’t completely erase is the essential silliness of a movie that was shot and edited to entice viewers crazy about music videos. He persuasively defends the power of montage in documentaries, and hasn’t played much with those sequences in this cut (the biggest change would be to give the flashbacks a sepia tone in the “No Easy Way Out” sequence). He punishes himself for omitting the meatier elements of the drama, but the breathtaking scenes in this rework are completely at odds with the adrenaline-fueled aesthetic of the film he created. It has stripped the vibrancy of the comics from Bill Butler’s cinematography, which only makes this hulking entertainment film a bit dead on the inside. And most controversial of all, it has removed all traces of Paulie’s robot, Sico. In doing so, he reduced Burt Young’s performance to next to nothing, mitigating the impact of Rocky’s outburst of gratitude before Paulie’s soulful and goofy fight (“If I could unbutton and go out and be someone else, I want to be you.”) Paulie is an integral part of the Balboa saga and deserves better.

Stallone’s passion for the character of Drago is contagious, and watching him meticulously refine 35-year-old scenes in a Sunset Strip editing suite is an unexpected thrill. The warrior spirit is very much alive in the 75-year-old author. And when it is announced in the next few months that Drago is his next movie, no one should be surprised. You still have a few rounds left.

Rocky IV: Rocky vs. Drago the Hulu and VOD on November 12.