After receiving a degree in chemical engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology and a master’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney, Dolph Lundgren started his acting career with a James Bond film (A View to a Kill) in 1985, quickly followed by his iconic performance as Soviet boxer Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, and then a string of action films. With a career spanning five decades, the man has kept busy, playing over 100 parts… and now, we have taken on the task of picking some of his best movies. Here we go:
DON’T KILL IT (2016)
Directed by Mike Mendez, Don’t Kill It combines action, horror, and comedy while dropping Lundgren into the role of badass demon hunter Jebediah Woodley, who seems more interested in finding his next drink than catching demons. His vocation has brought him to Chickory Creek, Mississippi, where Christmas is being ruined by the rampage of a demon that turns people into black-eyed, screeching, bloodthirsty maniacs. Woodley offers his services to the Chickory Creek police force and ends up being teamed with FBI agent Evelyn Pierce (Kristina Klebe) – so we have a buddy cop sort of scenario here. This movie clearly had a small budget, but that didn’t stop Mendez from unleashing some madness now and then, the standout sequence coming when the demon raids a town meeting with a sack full of weapons. The place turns into a bloodbath while the demon moves from one body to another, since not many people take the advice of the title, despite Woodley’s warnings. Don’t Kill It is a really good time, and definitely seems to have drawn some inspiration from the popular TV series Supernatural. The film shows us that Lundgren still has a sense of humor he can use on camera and a bit of a sense of humor about himself. It also shows that the man can pull off horror even in a slightly out there premise, so perhaps he should explore the genre some more.
RED SCORPION (1988)
Dolph Lundgren made his screen debut in the 1985 James Bond movie A View to a Kill – and even though he plays the hero in Red Scorpion, he starts off as the sort of character who would usually only show up in an action film to be thwarted by the likes of James Bond. That’s Spetsnaz soldier Nikolai Radchenko, who has been sent to assassinate the man who’s leading a rebel movement against Russia’s invading forces in Africa. For most of the movie, Radchenko is the bad guy. It isn’t until he fails at his mission, is tortured by his superiors for his failure, and is taken in by a native tribe that he fully becomes a decent character. Thwarted not by Bond but by his own conscience, he joins the rebels for a climactic battle against his countrymen (while wearing shorts). Red Scorpion is an ’80s shoot ’em up action movie that was directed by Joseph Zito, the man who gave us the slasher movies The Prowler and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, features special effects by master of splatter Tom Savini, boasts a soundtrack filled with Little Richard tunes, and lets Lundgren, playing a machine gun-toting killing machine with a heart of gold, share the screen with a foul-mouthed M. Emmet Walsh.
THE EXPENDABLES 2 (2012)
Sylvester Stallone had a really good idea when he made the 2010 film The Expendables, assembling a cast of action stars to set up an ‘80s throwback franchise that would be about a team of mercenaries who travel the world, doing whatever dangerous job they’re getting paid handsomely to do. That idea was able to reach its full potential with the first sequel, which was directed by Simon West (Con Air) and pits our heroes – Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Dolph Lundgren, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Nan Yu, with Liam Hemsworth, Jet Li, and Chuck Norris also showing up along the way – against a team of bad guys headed up by Jean-Claude Van Damme, with Scott Adkins as his right hand man. The Expendables 2 is an improvement over its predecessor in every way. It has a better script, was shot more stylishly, and does even more to fulfill the “action stars united” promise of the concept. More sequels followed, but they couldn’t live up to this one.
ROCKY IV (1985) & CREED II (2018)
Some would pick Rocky IV over Creed II without hesitation, but Creed II has a more complex part for Lundgren. Yes, it’s the same character, but in Rocky IV, the role of Ivan Drago was played as a more one-dimensional man, who was trained and conditioned to win fights for his country, no matter the outcome. In Creed II, the imposing Soviet boxer is an aged man who still wants to win, but this time through his son. Throughout the film, the character gets to evolve a bit more than in his first appearance and gives Lundgren more to work with and a chance to play a more dramatic role with no actual fighting involved. His work here shows growth as an actor and how the man who is often seen as tall and able to fight can also act and bring a character closure. Even if that is not as the hero. So the proper answer here seems to be to watch Rocky IV and Creed II back-to-back in a double feature.
THE PUNISHER (1989)
Sure, this Marvel Comics adaptation, directed by Mark Goldblatt, didn’t have a huge budget to work with, it left out the Punisher character’s iconic skull wardrobe, and it changed his origin story a bit… but this is still a really cool movie. Dolph Lundgren plays Frank Castle, a police officer who has become a vigilante since his wife and children were killed in a mob hit. As the film begins, he has already been operating as The Punisher for five years and has racked up more than 125 kills, doing his best to eradicate the mob families. Then the Japanese Yakuza, led by Lady Tanaka (Kim Miyori), comes into town looking to perform a hostile takeover: to force the mob families to give in to her terms – which include her taking 75% of their profits – Tanaka has their children kidnapped. The Punisher would gladly kill the fathers of every one of these kids without hesitation or remorse, but he can’t condone the harm of children. So he sets out to save the kids, even though it means having to form an alliance with a mobster, while his former partner Jake Berkowitz (Louis Gossett Jr.) works to bring his vengeful killing spree to an end. Lundgren does well in the title well, which just requires him to be brooding, deliver monosyllabic lines in a deep voice, and look cool dispatching enemies, and there’s plenty of action as we watch The Punisher take on not only mafia and Yakuza types, but also ninjas. Ninjas who use swords and Uzis!
MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE (1987)
The feature directorial debut of Gary Goddard, and to date the only feature film he has directed, Masters of the Universe, a live-action adaptation of the toy and animated series franchise, was the biggest production ever for the B-movie makers Cannon Films… and it was a critical and commercial failure that disappointed a lot of young He-Man fans. But not this one. I was a little kid when this movie reached home video and just accepted it, no questions asked, as another fun He-Man adventure. One that brings our sword-wielding hero (that’s Lundgren, of course) and some of his friends to 1980s Earth for a while, features a “Cosmic Key” that gets mistaken for a synthesizer, and introduces some new characters. All these decades later, it still holds up as a fine fantasy adventure with some cool action sequences and a great villain performance from Frank Langella as the skull-faced Skeletor. It may not have been the ideal adaptation, but it has its merits and has earned a strong cult following.
I COME IN PEACE (1990)
There are some excellent Christmas-set action movies out there. First Blood, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon and other Shane Black projects, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Trancers, etc. One that doesn’t seem to get enough play is the 1990 classic I Come in Peace (a.k.a. Dark Angel) which casts Dolph Lundgren in the role of (apparently very financially well-off) Houston detective Jack Caine, who is trying to bust a blue collar gang called The White Boys while dealing with a rocky love life and the fact that he has been stuck working with stuffy, suit-wearing FBI agent (Brian Benben) now that his undercover partner has been murdered. As if all that weren’t enough, he also comes to learn that there’s a hulking alien making its way around the city, shooting people up with drugs it stole from the White Boys so it can then extract endorphins from their dying brains to synthesize a drug to be sold on his home planet. We’ve got Lundgren fighting an evil alien (played by Matthias Hues) that’s armed with a brain-sucking wrist gauntlet, a high-powered gun, and a razor sharp magnetized disc – and the movie is just as fun as all of that sounds. This one was directed by former stuntman/stunt coordinator Craig R. Baxley, who was also behind the awesome Action Jackson and Stone Cold. Baxley did a fine job bringing the action, humor, and suspense to the screen, and made sure that things blew up real good when pyrotechnics were required.
SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO (1991)
Chris Kenner and Johnny Murata are both LAPD cops who can’t keep a partner, so they’ve been assigned to work together. One’s all about Japanese culture and has even built a Japanese-style house on the outskirts of Los Angeles. The other’s a Californian wisecracker who’d rather be working in Malibu. In a twist on expectations, the hulking blonde is actually the one who was born in Japan and loves the culture, the only thing the half-Japanese partner he’s been paired with has gotten from his ancestry are the martial arts he’s been practicing since he was four. These two are able to bond over the shared goal of bringing down criminal mastermind Funekei Yoshida (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), a very bad man who killed Kenner’s parents in front of him when he was a child. Once Kenner and Murata have brought him to justice, then intend to reward themselves by visiting the local club that serves “Sushi in the Raw” – which is sushi served on the body of a nude woman. The standard odd couple buddy cop formula and sparse window dressing of a plot are really just an excuse for Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee to kick all sorts of ass to a synth score. The action rarely stops in the 73 minutes between the title sequence and the end credits. The movie, directed by Commando’s Mark L. Lester, is ridiculous, but it’s a highly entertaining watch.
UNIVERSAL SOLDIER (1992)
Jean-Claude Van Damme, Belgian, and Dolph Lundgren, Swedish, both play Americans in this film, which begins with their characters Luc Deveraux and Andrew Scott serving in the Army, deployed in Vietnam in 1969. Scott has gone insane, massacring an entire village of innocent civilians and butchering his own men, accusing them of being traitors. When Deveraux confronts him, the two end up shooting each other to death… but then their corpses are packed in ice. Jump ahead to the early ’90s and Deveraux and Scott are both alive, not having aged a day, serving in a counter-terroism unit called Universal Soldiers. The UniSols are highly capable, with enhanced strength, a high tolerance for pain, and are seemingly unstoppable. They’re also brainwashed zombies. But then elements of Deveraux and Scott’s old personalities begin to emerge, putting them at odds again in modern day America. Van Damme delivers a charming and endearing performance as Deveraux, who brings some laughs as we watch him try to re-adjust to normal life, and Lundgren is captivating as the bugnuts Scott. Director Roland Emmerich made some higher profile, bigger budgeted movies after this, but Universal Soldier is his best.
As of this writing, Lundgren recently won a 9-year battle with cancer, and he seems to be doing very well. We saw him in The Expendables 4 and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom not long ago, and hopefully we can look forward to many more Lundgren action movies in the years to come.
What’s your favorite Dolph Lundgren movie? Would you have included Joshua Tree (1993), Command Performance (2009), Aquaman (2018), or Johnny Mnemonic (1995) on the list? Let us know in the comments!
