The third sequel to Rocky has gotten into politics, but there is no need for the critic to follow. Sufficient grounds for dismissal will be found, once again, in simple pugilistics. With his newfound defensive skills (see Part III) somehow mislaid, Rocky is again cast as the underdog against the amateur(!) Soviet champion, Ivan Drago, a.k.a. The Siberian Bull, all 261 pounds of him. ("It's a true case of David and Goliath," observes the ringside announcer, thus scotching any notion of these two fighters as proper allegorical representatives of two global superpowers, and giving us our answer to that intriguing lyric from one of numerous thumping rock songs on the soundtrack: "Is it East versus West or man against man?") The blond crew cut and granite face of the statuesque Soviet point us distinctly in the direction of Hitler's Ubermensch, and it would be a short leap from there to Schmeling vs. Louis. But it would seem to be an even shorter leap to the actual longest-reigning amateur heavyweight, Teofilo Stevenson (never mind skin color), who, with his piston-like left and tranquilizing right, cruelly teased American boxing promoters with the thought of turning professional, and who left it to foolish fight fans to mull over the question of how he would have fared against, say, Muhammad Ali. It was an ignorant question, and Sylvester Stallone has transformed it into an ignorant little movie. The proper cinematic reference point here would be Mark Robson's The Harder They Fall (as in "the bigger they come..."), which dealt directly with the gullibility of an American populace on whom an unknown Argentine giant, a.k.a. Toro, the Wild Man of the Andes, could be palmed off, on the basis of size alone, as invincible. Talia Shire, Burt Young, Carl Weathers; written and directed by Stallone. (1985) — Duncan Shepherd
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