1987 · action · drama · music
Over the Top
Directed by Menahem Golan1h 34m1987
Lincoln Hawk a hard-luck big-rig trucker takes us under the glaring Las Vegas lights for all the boisterous action of the World Armwrestling Championship. Relying on wits and willpower, Hawk tries to rebuild his life by capturing the first-place prize money, and the love of the son he abandoned years earlier into the keeping of his rich, ruthless father-in-law.
Our read: Over the Top (1987) reads as a neutral, kinetic, inventive action · drama · music entry — extreme in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, tender in temperature, ambivalent in outlook.
Neutral, kinetic, extreme action / drama, inventive in texture. Ambivalent, mid-stakes, tender.
- brisk
- intense
- tender
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How Over the Top feels to watch.
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“You want Stallone arm-wrestling melodrama about a trucker fighting for his estranged son.”
Skip it tonight — You cannot embrace earnest eighties cheese and sweaty sports-movie clichés unironically.
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