The Man

In an emergency call the police, fire department and the marines. In case of serious trouble call Dolph Lundgren. He is an Army of One.

The 6'6" engine of destruction is both adored and despised for exactly the same reason: Dolph makes violence look good.
Between the extremes of the classic, cleancut childhood hero He-man in Master's of the Universe and the nightmare of scary, chillingly feral, twisted and tragic loon Sgt Scott in Universal Soldier the blond Swede with the icy blue eyes has portrayed the whole grey scale of every imaginable type of fighting man. He clearly knows what he is about, being actually one. A good one. As a full contact karate champ he must be among the toughest people on the planet.

"...imagine getting into a fight with the f**ker." John Naughton, Empire, #79, January 1996

Dolph Ludgren's body is a work of art in flesh and bone with the functional aesthetics of a living machine, result of a singleminded and scientific effort to make the best use of a favourable genotype. Emotions play over the chiselled features as light and shadow over marble. Minimalist gestures encompass entire statements about the art and morals of fighting, over time delivering a comprehensive dissertation on violence.

Fascinating, repellent, anachronistic, it depends on the viewers outlook.
Those who like Dolph movies often maintain that the big man's work is underappreciated and that his technically superb action spectacles and solid characterisation do not get the credit they deserve. That is of course nonsense. Dolph Lundgren movies are established in a cinematic subcategory of their own, with a small, weird, truly select global following.

I'm glad to report that the retirement announcement a year or two ago meant what it usually means, and the dire day when there will be no more new Dolph movies is for now postponed.

"He has so much senseless violence left in him." Vivek Bidwai of The Hoya

The Movies

Rocky IV

"If he dies, he dies."

Ivan Drago was Dolph's first great role, boxing Sly as the Soviet Wunderwaffe.

"...tall, blond, taciturn, and hateful." Chicago Sun-Times

The hurrah-patriotic thing's trying hard to convince us that poor Rocky would have stood the ghost of a chance against the battering ram Ivan Drago! Hah! Hah! Hah! Not bloody likely!

Masters of the Universe

Dolph Lundgren is He-Man, displaying his great body to best advantage in wonderfully tacky body-armour. Only he could carry that off! The swordfights are very fine. Frank Langella as Skeletor and Dolph Lundgren make for two-dimensional goody-baddy characters par exellence, and also for gorgeous fantasy pinups. Call Motu old-fashioned, but the special effects of the pre-digitalised area have undeniable charm.

The Punisher

"What the f**k do you call a 125 murders in five years, huh?"

"Work in progress."

The Punisher is big, brutal fun, beginning and ending with Dolph sitting butt nekkid in a sewer talking to God in a deep grumbling voice. Inbetween the two buttshots he looks ultra-cool in black leather, rides his motocycle a lot, kicks a mean punch, scowls and drives his former police buddy Luis Gosset into politically correct paroxysms saying things like:

"The guilty will be punished!"

That's really good to hear in these psychoanalytical social sciences times.

Red Scorpion

Somewhat belated (1989) cold war flick bashing the usual commie bogeymen. That's ok. Really, it is!

Military patrol: "Are you out of your mind?"

Nikolai: "No. Just out of bullets."

Dark Angel

Bad alien: "I come in peace!"

Dolph: "And you go in pieces."

What can I say to that? YEEEHAAAAAAAA!

Men of War

"From Sweden, like me."
In apt reference to really strong drink, and a really big gun.

Nick Gunnar: "Do you ever wish that it was like before? Like before we came?"

Prostitute: "You want to f**k, cost twenty dollars. You want make friends, cost more!

Nick Gunnar: "No shit!"

Pentathlon

This is about an East German sports crack. I'm East German and I find the amazingly sensitive characterization makes more than up for the not so minor historical quibbles I might otherwise have.

Joshua Tree aka Army of One

Hostage: "What did you do? What's your crime?"

Santee: "Turned away from Jesus."

Lots of car chases.

Interesting thought: Would Dolph Lundgren even fit in a Ferrari?
Dolph The Definitive Guide

The Joel Goldsmith score underlying the bleak desert landscape adds a special bonus.

Universal Soldier

"Action fiends, violence hounds and rat-tat-tat junkies take notice, Universal Soldier was made for you. It's loud, it's fast, it's brutal, it's funny and it’s a blast. Is it the smartest flick on the block? HELL NO!" Arrow in the Head reviews

"Lundgren only has to act like a homicidal fruitcake and he's capable of that." Badmovies.com

The finale of Jean Claude Van Damme battering something as big and bad as GR 13 is about as believable as Rocky beating Drago or the Texan Rattlesnake winning against Triple H, I don't believe it, is all. But what will you, goodness must prevail. At least in film.

Fans Only

"...given a choice between more awful Dolph movies and no Dolph movies at all, I’d rather see another string of bad Dolph movies." Ziggie's Video Realm

Showdown in Little Tokyo

This one sometimes gets a bashing even from dedicated Dolph fans. Can't see why. So it's tacky, cheesy and corny? So what?

It's got Dolph AND Brandon Lee!

Some say Dolph ought to have played Lee's character and vice versa, and they might have some point where that hilarious Samurai suit is concerned.

Cover up

Polit thriller that somehow lacks oomph until Dolph's gets let offa the leash in the last minute but one, way, way too late.

The Peacekeeper

Dolph carries the US prez' black suitcase with the red button and terrorists get ahold of it by means of using dastardly tricks on our military hero. They push the red button to pulverize Mt Rushmore, which is a meritable act, in my opinion. After this first shot at good taste the terrorists of course go on to threaten the usual, which is to drop a nuke on Washington ... If you count together all the big bombs that movie baddies have threatened to drop on Washington I'm really amazed that people aren't afraid to live there. Dolph goes of course after terrorists, a pursuit which involves the darnedest car chase across some roofs, and recovers the case amidst much bloodshed. Prezzie and generality show up in long black car expecting Dolph to hand over the black case like a good patriotic boy, but Dolph reckons he had better keep the thing till the politics of those rockets get sorted out. So he wanders off into the woods with a loony grin and the black case firmly locked to thick wrist.

Storm Catcher

Roughly the same thing as The Peacekeeper, only with a sort of Super-Stealth, which Dolph ditches at the end, for bein' too damn' dangerous an article, and also because he's in a hurry to get back to his family.

Johnny Mnemonic

The Minion

Dolph plays a Templar saving the world from Satan. An ok enough "The world will end on Dec 31st 1999" flic, easily as good as End of Days.

Agent Red

“Ever heard of Agent Red?”

“Sounds like a bad action movie.”

This bit of dialogue is such irony! Agent Red is a health hazard of boredom and stupidity, which not even Dolph could save, short of a well placed high kick to the director's head. But forever being the Gentleman he just goes about the futile exercise looking quietly mortified.

Gill the Ripper

Can SM be boring? It can. Despite Dolph giving it a very valiant effort Gill Rips is a dud, a pathetic flic which the broadest shoulders couldn't hold up.

Blackjack

Dolph deserved better than the great John Woo did for him here. Woo deserved worse than what Dolph and supporting cast did for him here. Far worse. The inevitable smart little girl isn't annoying, as she might have been. The dame in distress does ok. The comic relief gourmet cook is funny. Dolph even dances, all to save the movie. All to no avail. The script and the director both just suck too much.

More Movies

The Shooter (aka Hidden Assassin)

Hidden Agenda

is aptly titled as the plot is somewhat obscure.

Silent Trigger

A cabinet piece played out between only four characters in a fine plot with intriguing twists, working sort of retrograde, with several faceless SWAT teams being, well, swatted for the body count. This bloodsoaked actioner has a slick and atmospheric look, beautifully photographed. Gina Bellman does little more than looking decoratively tough in black, while Dolph easily acts for the two of them.

Shooter: "There's an old saying just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."

Spotter: "Yeah. That's not a saying, it's a joke. An OLD joke."

Shooter: "Really! I never laughed."

Bridge of Dragons

The set is a post-apocalyptic world, actually Bulgaria, with a central European population, Asian princess persecuted by Asian badass general, a main character name of Warchild, the ruthless killer who makes a full turn towards the fight for goodness, no bridges to speak of and absolutely zilch dragons.

Can a hodgepodge like this work?

Strangely enough it does. It almost brings a tear to the afficionado's eye that such a movie could get made in 1999. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Same goes for

The Last Patrol aka The Last Warrior

This is yet another film with a postapocalyptic theme, a jumble of stereotypes and predictability that for some unfathomable reason works. Unless the reason is Dolph. He is good. He always is.

Sweepers

is set in Angola, taking up the landmine issue. Dolph drunk, down and out is always an awesome sight to behold. Once he screws his hipflask the unscrupulous arms dealers get it in the neck.

Detention

I can easily believe Dolph'd keep any schoolyard in order. Delinquent adolescents just don't want to mess with that teacher. The hipflask also starrs.

Direct action

Another good cops - bad cops thing with one difference. We have here none of the "I won't kill you, you will face your trial in a court of law" stuff spoiling the chase and final showdown. I presume we have Dolph's first directing effort to thank for the relentlessly executed fighting scenes. The supporting cast is fine too, especially Polly Shannon as the trainee on the job tagging along with tough honest cop Frank Gannon.

Retrograde

The year is 2200 A.D. when the Big Bug really is making tabula rasa. Dolph goes back into the past and the Antarktis to fix a few things there in order to prevent the biological catastrophe. So the catastrophe don't happen. So Dolph doesn't really go back. See? The space time paradoxon underlying the script is way more interesting than the film, which I have a sneaking suspicion is what duped Dolph into slogging through this. Case of his scientific training catching up with him (he holds a Master's degree in chemical ingeneering).

The Defender

What at a first superficial look might come across as a simply knit patriotic War-On-Terrorism movie is anything but simple. In a flashback opening scene we have it established at the very start that islamistic terrorists are evil and bloodthirsty and sick, no feeble excuses nor dodgy attempts at explanation or rationalisation. And that's that. From this premise the movie just goes on confronting us with a very uncomfortable thesis: That we have already integrated this War On Terrorism into our own way of life. What's it doing there, what's it doing to us? That is a question quite independent from the actual existence of those undoubtedly murderous fanatics, and indeed apart from flash backs there is not one islamist in the whole movie. Dolph directs, so the fights are realistic, gritty and logical in the battle we fight ultimately against ourselves.

Maximum Potential

Dolph's fitness video for everybody who wants to have a go at achieving that perfect body. Good work!

Dolph Quotes

On typecasting

"...I've fired a gun every way you can fire one and thrown every possible punch. If I want to grow in this business, I've got to do different things."

As I think back, it's probably a role I should have done more of, but you always want to try something new, to see if you can do something different. As I look back some of the best parts are comic book superhero type roles, and if you look like me you don't have to do that much, you're a different physical specimen and you don't have to work for it.

On action movies

We live in a time when nearly everything can be summed up in ones and zeroes, right? And that produces a certain amount of despair. (...) the tension and release produced by an action movie satisfies a deep urge in the human body. The kind of violence associated with hunting - and being hunted - was absolutely normal until about two hundred years ago. (...)it's a matter of genetic programming. I think that action movies probably fill some sort of void in our emotional makeup.

On body and mind

...when I watch a great athletic feat, like a basketball player soaring through the air, doing something seemingly impossible with his body, or a sprinter crossing the finish line, I'm speechless. At that moment, there's something about the body that's so primal, so pure. Godlike. The body is in a place beyond the mind, above it (...) In martial arts, for example, when you're training extremely hard, when you're fighting and it's the last 30 seconds and you're totally finished and you know you have to get it together and find that source of energy . . . sometimes you enter into a place beyond words, beyond comprehension. The body just takes over. I'm amazed by that. It humbles you. Reminds you how little you actually control things. (...)And then, of course, the biological process itself lends a certain urgency to life. I mean the experience of being injured, of healing, of aging, without your "participation," as it were. It's astonishing, a miracle. It keeps you connected within life and death, and it reminds you that the body isn't going to last forever, that it's going to give up. Which gives life a precious quality. You don't want to waste it.

On martial arts

"I felt a little bad for my opponents but after winning those two fights, I knew full-contact was definitely for me." In the 2nd World Open Karate Tournament in Tokyo 1979, one of the earliest international full-contact tournaments, when he knocked out his first two opponents with a "hiza-geri" (knee-kick to the face

"I believe the martial arts made, and still make me, a better person." www.dolphlundgren.com

On his dark side

"Brando was the first to play the likable villain. The Wild One was a great image. I would like to play those kinds of roles, not the sugar-soft kind. Or a good kind of guy who's slightly unlikable. You've got to have those two sides, other-wise you're boring."

"Europeans tend to have a slightly more decadent, raw, sensual side to them, which is why the press in Europe seems much more responsive to me. Many Americans don't pick this up."