RED SCORPION (1988)

 80's action movies for the most part are all dumb and very predictable. This one is slightly different mainly because the hero here, played by Dolph Lundgren, is a Russian. Of course it maintains that cold-war mentality by also making the bad-guys Russian and Cuban Communists. Dolph, who is not Russian but was typecast after ROCKY IV, fits the stereotype of a cold killing machine perfectly as far as he looks but I can't say I've ever been much of a fan of his acting style but I guess that's not important here. Unfortunately the movie follows all the cliches of the genre and plays out exactly how you think it will. There is one scene where a guy has his arm shot off which is kind of neat but I would only recommend this if you're a fan of watching large sweaty Swedish men shoot guns. I think by the time this movie came out I had already switched to only watching Asian action-flicks because they were just so much crazier and I think that was a wise choice. The director of this, Joe Zito, was also responsible for THE PROWLER and FRIDAY THE 13th Part 4 which are both pretty decent slasher flicks.