Over the Top

/</gidiv style="clear: both; text-align: left;"/>/giToday's  cinematography (as well as society as whole) thoroughly lacks manliness  and manly movies. That's why I had to dig up some old movie to make up  for it, and I'm satisfied with what I have found. Over the Top was made  back in 1987, the Golden Days, and tells the tale of Lincoln Hawk  (Sylvester Stallone) a broke truck driver, whose ex-wife is on deathbed  and her last wish is that Linc picks up their son Michael from some  junior military academy graduation and drives him to her in the  hospital. Actually, she knows that she is dying and wants them to bond  because Mike hasn't even met his dad, due to the efforts of his  grandfather. At first Mike doesn't want to do anything with Linc, but  slowly their relationship grows as Mike realizes that he is better off  with his real manly father than with his granddad.
But that's not all! Since Linc is without money he decides to earn some  in Las Vegas by winning International Arm Wresting Championship!  Arrghghgh!!! The first prize is 100 000$ and bigass Volvo truck, just  enough for him to start his own small company. And so the two plots  intertwine and bring the expected but still awesome conclusion.

You can expect good performance by Sly (as always) in which he reminded  me of Rocky (same underdog story). While Over the Top isn't Rocky, it's  still a good runner-up. Michael is played by David Mendenhall, but good  „performances“ also come from other arm wrestlers, mostly Rick Zumwalt  as Bob Hurley and Bruce Way as John Grizzly (the man starred only in one  movie in his life, and it was this). It's interesting to mention the  names of the main competitors in arm wrestling – Hawk, Bull, Grizzly,  Smasher, Mad Dog etc. What a merry bunch of badasses.

The soundtrack is also pretty good, filled with that cheesy rock music  which was made to be played in movies like this. One of the authors is  Frank Stallone, Sly's brother, which is also cool. Listen to this or this and say that  it's not awesome.

To conclude this (short*) review I highly recommend this movie to anyone  who would like to buy his own truck/car/bike and ride across the US  while blasting rock, if you know what I mean.

*If you're wondering why this review is so short, it's not because of my  laziness (well, not entirely because of it, at least) but because the  movie is so goddamn manly that I don't have any more words to describe  it. Just watch it.

RATED PURE GENIUS

Rating: 9/10

- review by Magnum