Sylvester Stallone

  • Over the Top (1987)

    Over the Top (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, August 2021) For those of you trying to differentiate one 1980s Sylvester Stallone film from another, Over the Top is the one in which he’s a truck driver who reunites with his snotty military academy-educated son and then goes on to win an arm-wrestling tournament. Alas, there isn’t much that’s over the top in Over the Top: it’s a crash between two separate formulas (reconciliation, plus a sports tournament) that plays things incredibly safe. Of course, it’s partially written by Stallone and directed by Menahem Golan — neither of whom are known for anything but playing to the crowd. Directed in a straightforward way (except for some behind-the-scenes footage of the arm-wrestlers echoing more modern reality-TV conventions), Over the Top is wholly unsurprising. I suppose that the film does have some capsule charm in aping mid-1980s trucking and arm-wrestling conventions complete with footage from authentic arm-wrestlers of the era, but that’s really not enough to make Over the Top in any way distinctive. Even among other Stallone films of the time, it takes a distant place back, given how it appeared between the far more, er, over-the-top Cobra and Tango & Cash.

  • Lock Up (1989)

    Lock Up (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2021) Oh, hey, look at that: one of the lesser-known Sylvester Stallone movies among the many, many ones he starred in during his 1980s heydays. Lock Up doesn’t often come up in conversations —chances are that if you talk about the “Stallone prison movie,” people are more apt to remember Tango & Cash. Or the more recent Escape Plan and its two sequels. But if Lock Up was and remains a very generic vehicle for a limited actor, it’s not that hard to watch. The basics are simple, as Stallone plays a prisoner who has to deal with a sadistic warden who personally hates him. Various prison-movie clichés are thrown into an overall dramatic arc of resistance and revenge. If you don’t really remember the film a few days later, that’s not unusual: It’s one expected beat after another, with director John Flynn struggling to make it distinct (and working against Stallone’s filmography, which includes much stronger examples of similar films). But it’s executed in palatable fashion, with a few high points culminating in an electric chair fake-out. Donald Sutherland plays the antagonist with energetic relish, bringing another highlight to the film. Those who like Stallone will like Lock Up better than others — no matter what you think about the film, it remains another of Stallone’s star vehicles.

  • Nighthawks (1981)

    Nighthawks (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2021) Twenty-first century reviews of Nighthawks have generally been kinder to the film than the ones it received at the time of its release, and it’s not hard to see why. In some ways, the film was ahead of its time, by maybe ten or twenty years: As a suspense story of how a cowboy Manhattan cop goes after a terrorist attacking New York landmarks, it shows many of the characteristics of late-1980s/1990s action movies as the form coalesced in the wake of New Hollywood. That it features none other than Sylvester Stallone with a fetching beard as the cop (plus Billy Dee Williams) and Rutger Hauer as the mad terrorist is a clear bonus, considering the career that both of them had later on, especially in the very kinds of movies that Nighthawks announced. The film does manage to get quite a few things right: the atmosphere of wintertime Manhattan is very well presented, and the standout sequence in the film (aside from an opening store bombing sequence that would become a staple of later action movies, such as Die Hard with a Vengeance) is a tense and still rather original sequence set aboard and around the Roosevelt Island Tramway with Stallone’s character talking with the terrorists. I wouldn’t want to oversell the film: Nighthawks may point the way forward that many more action films would follow, but it’s only semi-successful in its approach. Making a protagonist out of a cowboy cop is increasingly troublesome, the ending sequence is nonsensical and the film does feel a bit slow by contemporary standards. But it has aged better than other films at the time, and Stallone isn’t as annoying here as he is in other films. (A look at the production history of the film does reveal that he was already then showing the signs of being a troublesome star, but that’s Hollywood’s problem, not ours.)  Considering how it has faded from cultural memory, Nighthawks is now a bit of a pleasant surprise, and more interesting than expected.

  • Rambo: Last Blood (2019)

    Rambo: Last Blood (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, December 2020) Considering the downward trend of the Rambo series and the less-than-stellar impression left by this latest instalment, I’m tempted to ask if they really mean it when they say Rambo: Last Blood. Is it a promise? Is it legally binding? This time, seventy-something Sylvester Stallone hauls himself from the retirement home for another go at the Rambo character. This time around, he goes off to Mexico to rescue his niece from the clutch of sex traffickers, then comes back to the farm to set up a gleefully gory series of traps meant to show that, even at an elderly age, Rambo can take on an army of ethnically coded bad guys. While I do like that this final (?) instalment closes a circle that began with a loner assaulting typical America and ended with him defending what he has against enemies, this is thin and weakly realized over-rationalization for what’s a straightforward shoot’em up. Stallone can still growl menacingly, but he still looks as if he should be taking it easy rather than play in an overly macho celebration of bloodlust. As with the previous instalment, the gory violence is disturbingly over-the-top, easily exceeding some horror movies in conscious sadism. I’m absolutely not sorry to see Rambo go off into the sunset (literally) – this is a character that has overstayed his welcome, and the series surrounding him has grown unbearably ugly.

  • Victory aka Escape to Victory (1981)

    Victory aka Escape to Victory (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) No matter how you slice it, “Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine, Max von Sydow and Pelé” is a really interesting cast for a WW2 movie. One of those fun war movies absolutely not adapted from real events, Victory posits an exhibition football match between Nazis and allied prisoners in Paris, who set in motion a complex escape plan. Sylvester Stallone stars as an American (captured while fighting with the Canadians) with plans to escape who’s recruited into the resistance for an even bigger escape plan. Cleverly playing both the underdog sports tropes and the war movie escapes one, Victory may not be believable or coherent, but at least it’s distinctive from most other WW2 films you’ve seen. John Huston directs with his usual late-career competence, and the production means are generally sufficient for the film’s scope. But here’s the thing: despite the high potential of the film, its built-in comfort zone, and good performances from Stallone, Caine, Sydow and Pelé, Victory all feels curiously… dull. The execution is fine, but there’s a spark missing: the suspense is slight, the episodes on the way to the ending feel perfunctory, and the entire thing can be almost immediately forgotten. Which is weird considering how unusual a blend of elements it is. Ah well—I suspect Victory is one of those films that begs to be rediscovered periodically: not quite as an enduring gem, but as a curio.

  • Escape Plan 2: Hades (2018)

    Escape Plan 2: Hades (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, July 2020) The first Escape Plan wasn’t so great, so the idea of a sequel leaves one wondering—Where to go? With another escape? And that indeed ends up being the case, with another better prison and another (not necessarily better) plot to escape. The original had the distinction of teaming up Schwarzenegger with Stallone, but this time around only Sylvester Stallone remains to look tough in retirement age. The bare-bones plot (good guys escape from bad guys’ prison) thinks that more characters equals complexity, but ends up creating more confusion than interest from the result. At times, Escape Plan 2 seems to be throwing random plot elements in the mix just to see what would happen (Chinese entrepreneurs! Hackers! Private for-profit prisons! Robots!) and the result feels overstuffed with useless material. Some faux-philosophy is thrown in narration, but the film doesn’t deserve whatever patina of intellectualism that those suggest. Despite some attempts at stylish presentation from director Steven C. Miller, the result is almost instantly forgettable, except when it’s ridiculous (such as having Stallone go hand-to-hand with a much younger opponent). The climax is underwhelming (We’re in a hole in the ground in Atlanta! Wow! Who cares?) to the point of feeling less impressive than the following end credit sequence. Escape Plan 2 is passable background filler considering that you don’t really have to pay attention to the nonsense in order to follow the plot. Not essential viewing for anyone, including fans of the first film—but don’t worry, the end promises another sequel, which was actually released in 2019 as Escape Plan: The Extractors.

  • Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992)

    Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, May 2019) Some titles live on in infamy—not necessarily the films, but the titles, and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot is way up there with the worst. It does sum up the film’s premise nicely, though, as Sylvester Stallone plays a super-cop who’s saddled with an overbearing mother who screws up his ongoing investigations. As a concept, it’s not the worst idea in the world: it could have worked as intended, as a take-off on the kind of buddy-cop movie that was so popular at the time. Alas, the execution is limp: predictable, unfunny, about as in-your-face as it could be. What’s more, it feels stuck in a weird borderland in between too dumb to be realistic, yet not absurd enough to fully play into the premise. Estelle Getty is not really to blame as the titular mom, but Stallone is not even up to his low standards here—although try to watch the film in French if you can, as his dubbing actor is marginally more competent at line reading than he is, and thus gives the impression that he’s a better actor. Not that it’s enough to rescue this film from easy punchlines and lapidary assessments—as a title, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot is awful, but it turns out that the movie is as well.

  • The Specialist (1994)

    The Specialist (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, March 2019) There is really no reason to watch The Specialist for what it delivers. At best (and that’s stretching things), it’s a mid-1990s action movie that suffers from comparison to the genre’s wilder and better entries. It’s about bombs, so exhaustingly so that much of the script’s slight ingeniousness has been put into showcasing as many situations as could be solved through a well-placed bomb. Naturally, credibility isn’t The Specialist’s strong suit, and it’s comfortably outclassed by the other “bomb” action movies of 1994, Speed and Blown Away. So, what’s left to justify a look at The Specialist? A few details, such as the charmingly quaint look at mid-1990s BBS technology. But mostly the acting—for all of its faults, The Specialist can still boast of a strong trio of lead actors: Sharon Stone could play a strong female lead like no one else at the time, while Sylvester Stallone’s boorish charm remains distinctive and James Woods still makes for a great villain. But that’s not much, and all three of these actors have been served by better similar roles in better similar movies. Despite the strong Miami atmosphere, The Specialist is almost entirely forgettable—you may enjoy a few things along the way (and truth be told, fast-forwarding from one explosion to the next may be the most entertaining thing to do with the film), but I’m not sure that it’s worth a look nowadays.

  • Cobra (1986)

    Cobra (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, January 2019) There are times when, watching 1980s movie, you really start to wonder if Hollywood was sane at all during that decade. For instance: Cobra, the generic action movie featuring Sylvester Stallone at the epitome of the cowboy cop, ready to shoot and maim and kill before even thinking of maybe asking questions. Cobra takes the cop movie clichés of the decade and cranks them up to eleven—the cool car, the big weapons, the moody cop, the evil villains. Its excessive violence is made even worse by the lack of self-awareness of any kind of humour. Reading about the film’s horrible production confirms suspicions that emerge during the film itself: Stallone himself is the problem, thinking of himself as bigger than the movie and relishing the over-the-top psychopathy of the so-called hero. Even the film’s choppy plotting and editing goes back to Stallone, as he ordered last-minute trims to the film in order to compete in theatres. There are side benefits to watching the movie, but not many: Brigitte Nielsen has an outstanding supporting role, and the film does ooze mid-1980s atmosphere. Otherwise, well, Cobra ranks high on the list of exhibits why we really should not indulge in 1980s nostalgia.

  • Rocky V (1990)

    Rocky V (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Blu Ray, September 2018) After mostly holding up for three entries, the Rocky series took a serious hit with Rocky IV and became even worse in Rocky V. Within five minutes of the previous film’s conclusion, capricious plotting shows up to ruin everything: Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky is brain-damaged, and suddenly penniless except for a convenient boxing gym. The riches-to-rag story feels like a cheap shot this far in the series (not to mention that it makes no sense for an athlete as famous as Rocky to be suddenly penniless—even the movie itself, later on, has his name plastered on magazine covers) and the result makes for a poor follow-up to the series so far. Five movies in, it feels like a soap opera, not helped along by the nature of the film that spends far too much time around the dinner table and not enough in the ring. We cannot believe in the film’s attempt to return to the humble roots of Rocky’s character, not at this point. There’s a nice narrative fillip in having Rocky be a rather bad mentor and seeing his protégé turn evil, but whatever originality is sought is sabotaged by the execution of the film—The Rocky series has never been about subtlety, but seeing the character of Duke being presented as cartoonishly evil, and the journalists acting as plot explainers is a low for the series. Even the familiar characters behave in dumb ways, with Rocky not quite noticing his neglect of his suddenly teenage son, Adrian keeping her emotions in check until her mandatory once-a-movie shouting scene and brother-in-law Paulie is just an idiot (who also got rid of his robot). Annoyances abound—I still can’t fit rap music in the pre-Creed Rocky universe, and the ending street fight seems to step out of the series as well—and the film’s execution seems perfunctory at best. No wonder Rocky V is often left off from movie marathons of the series.

  • Rocky IV (1985)

    Rocky IV (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Blu Ray, September 2018) If the first three Rocky movies have an admirable consistency to them (sure, the first one is considerably more realistic, but the second and third volumes do provide satisfaction to viewers), the same absolutely cannot be said about Rocky IV, which jumps all sorts of sharks to include a robot assistant and have Rocky win the Cold War in order to avenge the death of a friend. Whew. How did we get here? It’s not as if the film is terrible … it’s that it’s got those weird things to it that make it easier to dismiss. Picking up once again by repeating the last few minutes of the previous film, Rocky IV has a dumb birthday interlude (introducing the robot!) before things get underway, as a Soviet boxer comes to compete with American heavyweights and Apollo Creed answers the call out of sheer boredom. Things don’t go well, and Rocky suddenly thirsts for revenge, travelling all the way to the USSR to teach the communist empire a lesson. The classic montage scenes contrasting the honest American way and the cheating Soviet one is a classic (I recall seeing it in class in the 1990s because my classmates used it to illustrate some dubious high-schooler thesis on dehumanization) even though, like much of the film, it doesn’t deal in subtleties. All the Americans are virtuous (although they obviously can’t tolerate a bit of pushback during press interviews), while all the Soviets are duplicitous. So it goes, until a final inarticulate speech in which Rocky promotes world peace and, I suppose, hastens the fall of the USSR. Whew. As an episode of the Rocky series, it does plant seeds that eventually become important in the excellent Creed. As a standalone, though, it has visibly aged faster than most other entries until then, and it doesn’t quite follow from previous episodes in the way that, say, Rocky III did. The plot is formulaic to the point of being laughable, with the training montage taking the place where a second act would go. It’s still reasonably entertaining (Sylvester Stallone does sport a really cool beard at the end of his rural training) and the series regulars all have a moment or two to shine. Still, this is where the series breaks form—and as Rocky V showed, the fallow period was a long one.

  • Rocky III (1982)

    Rocky III (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Blu Ray, September 2018) I may not like Sylvester Stallone or boxing all that much, and most of the Rocky series has left me lukewarm at best, but there’s something surprisingly interesting about this third film in the series and how it evolves naturally from the first two instalments. The opening five minutes is a montage (set to Survivor’s classic “Eye of the Tiger”) that pretty much give Rocky everything he’s ever wanted: Boxing success, a happy family, money and the mastery of the media that so eluded him in the second film. Naturally, there’s only one way to go from there, and after a hilariously mismatched bout with a wrestler, it’s on to a fight with a boxer with more fury and drive than Balboa at that point. As it usually goes in movies, losing means finding oneself, and so steps in Apollo Creed for a third and far more sympathetic turn in as many movies. While Rocky III is seldom less than formulaic, it does evolve with its characters, balance humour and tragedy (even of the melodramatic kind) and ends on a satisfying note, closing off a trilogy of sorts with a full character arc. (It’s interesting that the underdog roles have been switched a few times, but the film is clear about character being the ultimate determinant of valour—the antagonist here is hungry and driven, but ultimately not nice and henceforth inferior to a humbled hero.) Rocky III does have a few other charms, chiefly being a terrific capsule of the early eighties with no less than both Hulk Hogan and Mr. T in early roles. Carl Weathers is once again very good as Apollo Creed, while Sylvester Stallone does put in a few impressive physical scenes in portraying a heavyweight boxer. Even Talia Shire gets a nicely overdramatic sequence to play with, showing how her character too has evolved over three movies. It all amounts to a surprisingly interesting sequel at a time when most series are getting winded. After all, how different can you make movies all ending with a triumphant match?

  • Rocky II (1979)

    Rocky II (1979)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Blu Ray, September 2018) It’s interesting to see how hard Rocky II works at both following its limited protagonist in the aftermath of an unexpected success, and then again to remove much of the pleasant ambiguity of the first film. Whereas Rocky ended with a moral victory and a technical defeat, whereas it presented Carl Weathers’ Apollo Creed as an opponent but not as an antagonist, here comes the sequel to show (rather reasonably) the evolution of Creed’s egomania in feeding his turn to a darker side, and to thus justify a clear-cut victory by the end of the picture. It does feel like a natural follow-up, picking up five minutes before the end of the first film and going on naturally to the consequences of the final fight, from the hospital stay to the commercial endorsement, the overspending, the growing realization that a rematch is necessary for the fighters to truly settle their scores. Meanwhile, a pregnancy heightens the stakes even as Rocky confronts the fact that he’s only good for one thing. Again, the film isn’t any more subtle than its predecessor, but it does manage to deliver exactly on expectations. Sylvester Stallone is fine in the title role, and his direction is mostly unobtrusive. There are signs that Rocky II is self-aware, but not distractingly so. It does make for a good sequel that doesn’t tarnish the original and arguably even heightens it.

  • Rocky (1976)

    Rocky (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Blu Ray, September 2018) Intriguingly enough, Rocky is one of those movies that you think you’ve seen even if you haven’t: It was a massive success, earning both an Oscar and great box-office returns. It made Sylvester Stallone an icon, complete with iconic visuals (arms raised over Philadelphia) and sounds (“ADRIAN!”) It spawned a series of sequels still going forty years later, and is often used as shorthand description of just about every underdog sports drama out there. I may have seen Rocky as a kid, but not, to my recollection, as an adult. Remedying to that, I was struck by how (contrarily to many other movies so popular that you think you’ve seen them even if you haven’t) Rocky is darker than expected yet almost exactly what it says it is. It follows a declining not-too-bright boxer as he’s given a second chance, pursues a girl and dislikes his job as a loan-shark “collection agent.” Stallone is at his Stalloniest as Rocky Balboa, playing a simple character with some nobility. If it works, it’s because Rocky’s sports aspect takes a visible back seat to the character-driven drama: even the premise of a champ giving a chance to an unknown is purely arbitrary, albeit cloaked in good work from Carl Weathers. Talia Shire is cute enough as Adrian, with one good scene toward the end of the film being enough to elevate her role above being simply the romantic interest. Some of director John G. Avildsen’s visual touches are interesting—while most commentary about the film’s visuals focus on the “Rocky Steps” training montage, I was more impressed by a quiet static neighborhood shot showing Rocky hiring his manager, with a train passing in the background as a flourish. Rocky is not subtle, and it’s not sophisticated, but (much like its eponymous character), it’s tough and can absorb a lot of punishment. It holds up, and not just for those who like boxing.

  • Judge Dredd (1995)

    Judge Dredd (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On TV, January 2018) I saw Judge Dredd in theatres back in 1995, accompanied by a good friend who had already seen the movie and was looking forward to my “wow” reaction at the cityscape revealed early in the film. My reaction to it then is pretty much my reaction to it now—the first half of the film has some worthwhile world building before disintegrating in a forgettable Sylvester Stallone action film—and very little of the movie has anything to do with the original Judge Dredd comic book. (But that’s why we got Dredd in 2012.)  Another viewing twenty years later highlights the clumsiness of the adaptation attempt—the film isn’t smart enough to execute the satirical vision of the Dredd comic book, so it comes across as silly most of the time. Still, there is some effort here in trying to create a future (as dark and nonsensical as it can be) and it’s that effort that sustains the film during its first act, and then again at the beginning of its third. Otherwise, though, don’t hope for much. Stallone is his humourless self here (not contributing in the slightest in the film’s satirical potential), while Armand Assante does his best as a featureless antagonist and Rob Schneider is intentionally annoying as a sidekick. Diane Lane and Joan Chen aren’t too bad, though, but that’s a relative assessment when the plot has so little use for them beyond the obvious. We now know that the production of the film was troubled by an ongoing argument between Stallone and director Danny Cannon, each of them pulling in a different direction. The result, sadly, is still with us—worth a look for some of the production values, but definitely not as a cohesive science-fiction film and even less so as a Dredd adaptation.