Review: ‘Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot’ — Sylvester Stallone’s Biggest Mistake

Despite the fact that he was introduced to the world as the loveable underdog Rocky (there were earlier minor performances, but Rocky was Stallone’s first notable major role) and catapulted even further into Hollywood history in the (now) underrated First Blood as a perplexed veteran striking back out of fear not long after, the enduring cinematic image associated with Sylvester Stallone is one of extreme masculine brutality. It is sweating, baby-oil covered pecs and biceps, over the top explosions (some featured in Over the Top itself, some not) and action films with death counts soaring easily into the hundreds. While Rocky’s melodramatic romance with Adrian (Talia Shire) was that franchise’s focal point more so than the boxing (most of the time, at least), Stallone is still connected culturally to the very specific image of having a hefty machine gun in each hand while drenched in sweat. Of course, with time he has actively played into this iconography with films like the silly camaraderie in the ensemble casts of the Expendables quadrilogy or the more unsettling brutality of Rambo: Last Blood which seems almost to be a revisionist consideration of the excessive violence of…