Our movie this week, 1987’s Over the Top starring Sylvester Stallone, has always lived on the periphery of my life. It was on in the background at bizarre basement parties, my friend Nick had an obsession with it, YouTube clips of particular scenes have been emailed to me. But until last week, I had never sat down to digest the entire thing in one go. And wow. If last week’s letter was about how to do a 90-minute movie well, this week’s is going to explore how you can ruin one.
Before getting into the movie itself-- a 93-minute romp through the worlds of arm wrestling competitions and truck driving-- I need to briefly set the scene with a history lesson about the movie’s producers - Golan and Globus and their production company The Cannon Group (most well known as Cannon Films). Cannon is responsible for the majority of bad movies and B-movies from the 1980s. Masters of the Universe? The Happy Hooker? Death Wish sequels? Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo? All Cannon Films.
Their goal was to buy bottom-of-the-barrel scripts and pump out as many movies as they could each year to turn a profit. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t love movies and making them, they LOVED it, they just weren’t very… let’s say… detail-oriented? Their movies are well-known for not making a lot of sense--plot holes and bad dialogue are rampant-- and because they bought cheap scripts and skimped on details, they could afford to pay stars good money to be in their movies. Stallone was reportedly paid $12 million to star in Over the Top, which only grossed $11.5 million at the box office, for example.
Cannon dabbled in all genres but its bread and butter was the action film with names like Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson. They’re even widely credited for helping to launch the US martial arts craze at the time. I can’t cover their entire story here, but I highly recommend the documentary Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films for a deep dive into the world of these moviemakers.
So, that’s where we start. A movie produced and directed by the kings of bad at their peak just before things start to slip from their grip.
Over the Top follows our trucker hero, Lincoln Hawk played by Stallone, (who is both referred to as Hawk and Hawks interchangeably in the movie) getting to know his estranged son on a cross-country road trip towards the biggest arm wrestling competition in the country. At the time the movie was made, arm wrestling enthusiasts across the US were adamant that this movie would thrust their sport into the spotlight and that it would finally get the respect it deserves. They were excited. The production company even went as far as to create and host their own tournament in Las Vegas -- filmed and used for the last third of the movie.
Fun Fact: The phrase “over the top” refers to the point in an arm-wrestling match where one opponent forces back the arm of the other, goes over the top of their arm, and slams them down for the win. For whatever reason, I always thought it referenced being “extra”. Lucky for me the kid playing Lincoln Hawk’s son, Mike (David Mendenhall), says it no less than 100 times in those 93 minutes.
There are a lot of failings I could get into with this one, but my biggest gripe is that the stakes are so clouded. We never get a clear sense of Hawk’s motivation. At first, it seems he wants his son’s admiration-- but signs away custody to get out of jail. Then it seems he wants the glory of winning the arm wrestling match-- but sells his company truck to bet on himself so that he wins more money to start his own company and can win a better truck. So then it seems he’s in it just for the money and the new truck-- but turns down an offer of both from his father-in-law (Robert Loggia).
(Yes, you’re reading that right. He owns his own company truck but trades it all in for the chance to win a better truck-- to start his own company. What that business is, we have no idea, but I guess it could be trucking… again?)
I guess the vaguest motivation I was able to pull together is that he wants to do everything on his OWN terms: win his son’s admiration, win the competition, get a new truck. The American Dream. Which, mind you, is a HUGE staple of Cannon films (the majority made during the Reagan era) so it tracks. But because of this blurriness, the character choices are confusing and any rooting for Hawk feels a little empty. The stakes, whatever they may be, do not get greater as the movie proceeds. Hawk is always going to compete in the competition, he is always at odds with his father-in-law, his relationship with his son is always a little shitty and tenuous.
The movie opens with Hawk being reunited with his son after 10 years. Where he has been being lightly explained away as not being Hawk’s fault; it was his father-in-law keeping them separated all these years. Hawk wants to be a father now loosely motivated by the fact that his former wife is dying. He spends the rest of the movie maintaining that stance and being the best father he can be, sometimes making the wrong choice, but still trying. We never get any growth.
Take a look at the scene below. This scene is written and scored as if it is supposed to be a gamechanger, he’s becoming who he should be. He’s taking a risk. Only it comes after he’s already driven his freaking truck into his father-in-law’s house. There is no character change.
I watched this with Frank, my fiance, and co-host of the Give it 5 podcast, who always likes to “fix” movies. He made the keen observation that the movie would be so much more enjoyable if the kid’s mom dies in the opener and the Hawk is forced to become the father he never was with a son he didn’t want. It would make the relationship with both his son and father-in-law that much more powerful. He’d be forced to make real choices. But instead, the movie chooses to make Stallone the hero at all times. He’s a good guy. And good guys? They don’t do anything wrong.
Plug: Be sure to check out the Give It 5 pod on Masters of the Universe for another Cannon deep dive.
Sure, the dysfunction of the movie makes it enjoyable at times. Hawk drives his truck into the front of his father-in-law’s ornate home. There are a lot of semi-pro wrestlers lubed up in baby oil. There’s the ingenuity of Hawk rigging a weighted pulley system in his truck cab so he can work out his arm wrestling arm while driving. And I definitely laughed when he made his kid sleep in the truck sitting up overnight. But without those clear stakes, even if they’re simple, this movie stays a bad movie instead of being an enjoyable B-movie or cult favorite. There’s just no charm and no direction, literally. We don’t learn about the competition until about a third of the way through. Hawk and Mike are just driving.
I wish they had spent more time building the world of arm wrestling. For example, at the tournament, Hawk is competing for a cash prize and a truck. It seemed like an odd prize to me, wouldn’t he be the only person there who would want to win it? Alas, I didn’t know that at actual real-life competitions there is an entire TRUCKER division. Again, give me the stakes and I will buy-in! I’m easy to win over, I promise. I realize that arm wrestling itself is a boring movie sport but if we’re going to buy in and feel passionate about it we need to see more-- the winners, the losers, the veterans, the injured, the failed. We need to know what Hawk is up against. Which as it is now, isn’t much.
I’ll leave you with a positive: and that is the fact that Over The Top is classic Cannon Films Americana. When I say Cannon Americana I am referencing the ever-so-off tone they set and how they see America in the 80s on the whole. They never quite nail it and where they land is comical. Here’s a great depiction of what I mean:
Am I being too harsh? Tell me. I’m curious to hear from people who love this movie. I get that it's easy to laugh at but how do you stay engaged without the charm? Without any winks? Let me know in the comments.
References:
https://ultimateclassicrock.com/over-the-top/
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-1985-08-27-8502050044-story.html
http://legacy.aintitcool.com/node/30932
https://www.joblo.com/over-the-top-1987-revisited-sylvester-stallone-movie-review/
https://nypost.com/2015/09/28/how-one-company-turned-out-dozens-of-the-worst-movies-ever-made/
Never was a fan of this film…While it’s been years since I’ve seen it, what I remember is that it takes itself way too seriously and there’s just no joy or fun in it (very similar to Cobra). One can imagine a young Michael Bay finding great inspiration in Over the Top, maybe having a poster of it up in his dorm room. 😊