Rocky IV (part 2 of 2)

continued from part 1...

As much as the opening sequence jolted my mind right into the action with a little surprise, the plot was nothing to exclaim about. It is a rehash of the same old story; everyone knows. But we keep going back to see Rocky for one very simple reason: in him, we see bits and pieces of ourselves.

The old Rocky that we identified so strongly with was still prevalent throughout, but the difference with this fourth feature lied in the subtlety of how that was brought out. In the first part of the film, unlike what I had come expect, we do not see the rash, hot-tempered Rocky of old immediately. Rather he was portrayed as being much more conservative, not nearly as flamboyant. Perhaps the filmmakers wanted to depict his maturation with the passing of time since the last film. Besides Rocky, the other characters remained similar to how they were portrayed previously, with the only exception being Apollo Creed.

What we see here is a sort of role-reversal between Rocky and Creed, with each taking up the character traits of the other, shown in the previous films (but you had to have watched the previous ones to notice). I thought this was quite a refreshing change, definitely different from the other more straight-forward portrayal of the main characters in previous engagements.

What really fascinated me, however, was the whole idea of this film revolving around the new character introduced—Ivan Drago, a boxer from the USSR attempting to break onto the US boxing scene. This “conflict” between Rocky and Drago transcends its face value as merely being a boxing match between two fighters. If you were to consider the cultural climate around the time the film was made (circa 1980s), you can clearly see where the exaggerated and negative portrayal of the Soviet Union came from.

It was still the era before the cold war ended in the 1990s, and public anti-sentiments against the Soviet Union had not seemed to ease up, even though towards the late 1980s, the Soviet government already appeared to show certain characteristics common with a liberal democratic political system.

Though understandable, it was nonetheless quite comical to a casual viewer like myself to see the somewhat jingoistic display of US might on screen. Apollo Creed showing up to the fight on elaborately decorated props, wearing a star-spangled banner robe and matching boxing shorts, with James Brown singing “Living in America” in the background—it was heavy-handed on the part of the writers, but what is Hollywood without the dramatization, and the manipulation of people’s psyche?

Having said all that, it still boiled down to what I had expected, or perhaps what many others had expected before they saw the film and what we got out of it afterwards. It was unpolished at certain spots, but it is precisely that raw and down to earth quality that we crave about. I expected a good time, and definitely got out a hell of a good time.

Rocky did beat Drago in the end. Who would have known? It wasn’t just about Rocky bashing the living daylight out of the bigger guy in the other corner of the ring, it’s about how we secretly wished it was we who were doing exactly the same thing in our own big bad boxing ring called life.


*play theme music, picture Rocky running up the flight of stairs to the city hall, both arms held up high in triumphant manner*


+listening to: blooze by peter frampton