The film is written, directed by and stars Sylvester Stallone.
The cast includes Talia Shire, Burt Young, Carl Weathers and Swedish actor Dolph Lundgren as Russian Ivan Drago.
Rocky IV was one of many films of the 1980s that represented the desire to recapture American values in order to make a break with the defeatist generation in Vietnam.
In the context of the Cold War, Ivan Drago was actually the perfect villain for Rocky Balboa because he embodied in an athlete the collective imagination of the Soviet threat.
Drago, a boxer from the Soviet Union, is portrayed almost as a dehumanising machine and modelled after the agencies of the communist government.
The epic final battle (perhaps the bloodiest of the saga) depicts the clash of world powers.
Rocky IV is undoubtedly the most propagandistic episode in the Cold War setting, even if it indulges in some self-criticism of American hubris. It is also among the most entertaining and euphonious of the saga.