Pentathlon (1994)

ridiculous rating

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Another shot of Dolphine straight to the system.Pentathalalogram is a movie about swimming, surprisingly, and there are no bullets.However, there are: swimming pools, water, treading water, the butterfly and the backstroke and bathing suits and diving boards but nobody dives.Dolph here plays Dolph who plays a swimmer who gets chased by his former coach because he is just so awesome and swimmy that his coach falls in love with him in a nice way and stuff.Unfortunately, Dolph does not explode any aliens in this one or decapitate any children but hey, you gotta take the wheat with the chaff and this is pretty chaffy.Pentagram/Rhombus

If you don't have anything smart to do, please find something, just don't watch this movie. Or watch it if you wanna die of boredom! It's absolutely awful, full of stupidities, full of logic and historical holes, full of terrible acting (as expected, after all we're talking about Dolph Lundgren), full of clichés, full of stereotypes... Director and writer Bruce Malmuth showed that he doesn't know anything about (modern) history. One day the main negative character is Stasi member and the other day he is a Neonazi?! Hello! Anything sounds strange here? Once again, find something else to do rather than losing 100 valuable minutes of your life.

Dolph Lundgren stars as an Olympic athlete who is looking to make his comeback. However not only does Lundgren face the hurdles of getting back in shape, quitting smoking and pulling himself out of a depression he also has to contend with a psychopath/neo-Nazi coach (David Soul) who is still obsessed with him after Lundgren defected years before. Dolph Lundgren is really one of the most inconsistent action stars in the business, for every enjoyable action flick he makes (The Punisher, I Come In Peace, Universal Soldier,Army Of One) there is more that are just plain terrible (Cover-Up, Masters Of The Universe, Red Scorpion) however in sheer dullness few of his titles live up to the painfulness of Pentathlon. I admit that the plot hints at some fun, with Lundgren facing a neo-Nazi army while training for the Olympics but sadly this is supposed to be character driven and in the hands of Lundgren, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that he's in way over his head. Lundgren tries extremely hard to make the part credible but he fails and instead contributes one of his worst performances to date. Lundgren of course can be effective mainly when he beats up on various bad guys but we instead get too many scenes of Lundgren soul searching and hence this is as dull as it gets. David Soul is amusing in the role, adding a wisp to his villainous scowl which almost makes up for the horrendous story but overall let's face it, placing him against Dolph Lundgren is nearly impossible and it's hard to believe that a director (Who helmed Nighthawks mind you!) could believe in the idea that a fight between Lundgren and Soul would even be close. Worst of all there is next to zero action, it's as if Lundgren wanted to try and act and despite his best efforts, one will never appreciate him for anything more than just providing mindless action and nothing else beyond that. Lundgren has a screen presence sure, but he's not a great actor so if you take away his ability to fight then it's no secret the movie is bound to be a disappointment.* out of 4-(Bad)

This has to be one of the worst films I ever watched. Actually, it was so painful, I could not bear to watch it all the way to the end. Now I know where Americans get the grey image of "communism" from. A completely unrealistic portrait of what life was like in East Germany!!!