Life In The DPC!

Over The Top

Despite working at Blockbuster for five years I don’t consider myself a movie expert and I don’t have great taste in cinema. This is proven by the simple fact that I enjoy James Bond flicks and anything starring Scarlett Johansson. Of course anything involving the aforementioned Scarlett is for the eye candy factor, the exception being Lost In Translation.

But enough about my love of Scarlett Johansson and back to Over The Top:

Lincoln Hawk is a struggling trucker who arm wrestles on the side to make extra cash while trying to rebuild his life. Hawk’s wife Christina is very ill at the beginning of the film, and asks that Hawk pick their son Michael up from military school so that he may get to know his son since they have been apart since Hawk left them ten years earlier. His father-in-law Jason Cutler is enraged since he feels his daughter was deserted by Hawk, that his daughter and Hawk should never have been married in the first place, and Hawk has no right to be in his grandson’s life. - Courtesy of Wikipedia

Over The Top makes it way onto DPC’s Top 100 Movie List because it combines many genres and it also paints an optimistic portrait of the human condition. On one hand you have a child torn apart by divorce, the failing health of his mother and never really knowing his dad. All of these real world issues are then combined with the cutthroat world of interstate truck driving and competitive arm wrestling.

Sylvester Stallone’s Lincoln Hawk epitomizes the proletarian everyman as he struggles to make ends meet and all the while his life has the void that only his bratty son can fill. Of course Stallone ultimately triumphs and to a lesser degree Over The Top is another chapter of his greater work in the Rocky series.

But what really ties Over The Top together is the work of the Red Rocker, Sammy Hagar. Hagar’s “Winner Takes It All” is up there “You’re The Best”, from the Karate Kid, as one of the greatest theme songs of any movie released in the 80’s.