Someone's Favorite Movie (blog): Over the Top
“The world meets nobody halfway. When you want something, you gotta take it.” - Lincoln Hawk
Sylvester Stallone has made a healthy living from portraying the guy that everyone wants to see win. His role as Rocky Balboa made him an instant star and reaffirmed what America always knew about itself: we love the underdog.
It's wired into the nation's DNA. America started life as the anemic little brother of England. Every immigrant that ever passed through Ellis Island had big dreams, but plenty of doubters back in their homeland.
Pop culture is nothing, but a reflection of the likes and dislikes of society itself. From the Rocky series to Spider-Man to The Karate Kid to Rudy, the underdog has become a popular and important part of entertainment. The underdog makes us cheer for him, makes us smile and feel good when he achieves his dreams, and lets us believe that we can overcome our own obstacles and persevere in the face of adversity.
It was only natural that the man who made a career out of being the underdog tried it again with Over the Top, even though this premise is a harder sell: a dim-witted trucker who bailed on his family comes back after ten years at the behest of his dying wife in order to finally have a relationship with the son that he’s never really known.
Sylvester Stallone plays Lincoln Hawk in a quieter, more subdued manner. It’s almost like he’s concentrating with every neuron that he has to adequately enunciate every line of dialogue. It’s an interesting choice that distinguishes him from his more popular franchise characters: the monosyllabic grunts of John Rambo and the mush-mouthed ramblings of Rocky Balboa.
“What I do is I just try to take my hat and I turn it around, and it's like a switch that goes on. And when the switch goes on, I feel like another person, I feel, I don't know, I feel like a... like a truck. Like a machine. “ - Lincoln Hawk. That’s a real line of dialogue.
Stirling Silliphant:
1. Won an Academy Award in 1967 for writing the screenplay for In the Heat of the Night
2. Has one of the most amazing names that anyone could possibly say
3. Sounds like the name of a character that Sylvester Stallone would play in one of his movies.
Or maybe he just doesn’t believe in the dialogue he’s performing.
That shouldn’t be the case. Stallone cowrote Over the Top with Stirling Silliphant who won an Academy Award for writing In the Heat of the Night. Don’t forget: Stallone was nominated for an Academy Award in 1977 for Best Original Screenplay (and Best Actor). That’s an impressive pedigree between the two, but something doesn’t gel here
Lincoln Hawk’s wife, Christina, (it's actually implied they're still married, but he's been gone for a decade) is suffering from a heart ailment and is about to undergo an important surgery. Fearful that her son will be left with only his grandfather, the rich and controlling Cutler, she asks Hawk to pick up his son, Michael, so that some father/son bonding can occur during the ensuing road trip.
Hawk shows up in his HAWKS HAULING semi truck to pick up the son he doesn’t know for an awkward road trip full of small talk and hurt feelings. It doesn’t help the situation that Lincoln Hawk is a blue collar, Joe Everyman, showing up a rich and snobbish military academy. Lots of rich person sneers and “well, I nevers…” from the other parents picking up their privileged offspring.
Mike really doesn’t want to go with this guy that he doesn’t know. He provides the mic drop moment: “Do you really think you can make up 10 years in 2 to 3 days?”
Just so you don’t think that Lincoln Hawk is a total cad, here’s the “save the cat” moment: Mike finds out that Hawk has been writing his mom all these years and has been writing Mike too. Those letters just never found their way into Mike’s hands.
Lincoln decides to stop off at a steak joint that he knows about despite the fact that Mike says one day he’ll be poisoned by cholesterol and rot from the inside, and Michael gets to see his father's special skills in action when a man called "Smasher" challenges Hawk to a bout of arm wrestling.
It's on.
Hawk marches towards the special arm wrestling table, his game face on. I'm sure that crowds who saw this at the theater in 1987 burst into random arm wrestling challenges, inspired by the pure machismo leaking off the silver screen.
Hawk sits down, turns his hat backward (Hawk later says that when he turns his hat backwards, it makes him feel like a truck or a machine. Neat.), and goes OVER THE TOP.
Over the Top means pain for your opponent, victory for you.
Going "over the top" is Hawk's special arm wrestling finishing move. It's like when you see Hulk Hogan drop a leg. It's all over. When Hawk snakes his hand around and on top of yours, all you can do is stare with wide-eyed fear as your hand slams against the table, causing your biceps to explode and your shoulder to slide out of socket.
Hawk's arch-enemy is in the building, Bull Hurley, a huge tank of man, who is apparently a master of the arm wrestle, but may not have the special OVER THE TOP finishing move that Hawk has learned.
Hawk refuses Bull's challenge, saying that Hawk is yellow (ooooh, sic burn) and they'll meet again at the World Championships in Vegas. Mike is unimpressed and says Hawk is a hustler. Jay-Z approves.
What follows is a heart-warming couple of days as Mike acts like a pompous ass, showing off his high IQ, speaking proper English, and calling his dad a muscle-bound moron. In a show of vehicular stupidity second only to letting a blind Al Pacino drive in Scent of a Woman, Hawk punishes his mouthy son by letting him drive his semi down the road. That'll show him.
This newly formed father-son bond is put to the test when they end their road-trip at the hospital. Alas, they arrive too late. Christina has already passed and Mike never got to say goodbye. For the next 20 minutes, Mike shows off his best scrunched-up, crying face as he runs off to be with his Grandfather, emotes throughout his mother's funeral, and then cries again when Hawk shows up to reclaim him.
“He doesn't even belong on my arm wrestling table. That's my area, that's my game, and he's got no shittin' business there. And all I want to do is hurt him, cripple him, get him off the table. And so he never dares try to compete against me again. “ - Bull Hurley about Hawk. What a way with words.
Of course, Hawk chooses to smash his beloved semi through the front gate and into Cutler’s house, which is not the best way to start a conversation about custody rights and whatnot.
Cutler agrees to drop all charges if Hawk leaves the state and, with Mike's blessing, he runs off to Vegas and the World Arm Wrestling Championships.
I won’t spoil the ending, but this is a movie about finding redemption through the power of competitive arm wrestling. I’m sure you can connect the dots, dear reader.
Random Thoughts:
After Lincoln and Mike sleep in the truck overnight, an exercise montage and road footage takes place to Kenny Loggins’ “Meet Me Halfway”:
No era of movies did the movie soundtrack and song placement better than the ‘80s.
“Meet Me Halfway” is an underwhelming song when it comes to Kenny Loggins, but I still found my spirits positively uplifted by hearing it.
Kenny Loggins is the soundtrack king of the ‘80s and it’s not even a debate.
Part of me thinks that Kenny Loggins secretly records a song for every movie that’s released in the hopes that he’ll get the call to make some more movie memories. The Fast and the Furious movies are practically made for this. Throw open the vaults, Kenny Loggins! Uplift my spirits once more!
Random Thoughts:
I vaguely remember seeing moments of this movie when I was younger, primarily the scene where Hawk bullied his son into challenging a much larger and somewhat older kid to an arm wrestling match.
The older kid was Sterotypical 80s Bully with the spiky hair and mullet that young kids my age were conditioned to be terrified of by the pop culture of the time.
Typical ‘80s cutdowns whilst they engaged in the arm wrestling:
Bully (to Mike): “YOU HAVE A GRIP LIKE A GIRL”
Bully’s random minion: “MAYBE HE IS A GIRL”
That’s the face of arm wrestling acting, folks!
Random Thoughts: Lincoln Hawk has 20 to 1 odds to win the tournament, so he places an $8,000 bet on himself to win. There’s a metaphor there, kids!
Random Thoughts: Lincoln Hawk has 20 to 1 odds to win the tournament, so he places an $8,000 bet on himself to win. There’s a metaphor there, kids!
Over the Top is a cheesy, yet entertaining piece of '80s crowd pleasing slop filled with all the ridiculous, yet gratifying moments that you come to expect from a feature co-written by Stallone. There's that shaky balance of brilliance mixed with cringe-worthy stupidity that somehow always seems to make it passed the cutting room floor in mainstream '80s era movies.
This era of the Internet is just dying for more gifs of Stallone’s ridiculous “I’m straining real hard and giving it my all” faces from the final arm wrestling bouts.
Over the Top is not high art and it’s not the worst thing that you’ll ever watch. It’s a movie filled with empty calories. It’s a good way to distract yourself for a bit, but don’t expect any of it to stick with you. It’s one of those movies that’s perfect to put on in the background while you do something else.
This is the current Amazon Prime Video blurb for Over the Top: “A Championship title, a huge cash award, and his son’s love — the greatest prize of all — are at stake when Hawk battles his strongest enemy for everything he has ever wanted. Sylvester Stallone stars in this powerful and exciting film, his most challenging role to date”
Laying it on a bit thick there, Amazon Prime.
What did you think of Over the Top? Did you love it or hate it? Do you have any fond childhood memories of it? Leave a comment below.
Miserable Retail Slave has its very own movie podcast, Someone’s Favorite Movie. It’s the podcast where every movie is someone’s favorite.
Got a guilty pleasure or forgotten gem that we should know about? Leave a comment below and we might cover it on the next episode of Someone’s Favorite Movie!
A Definitive Ranking of the best Sylvester Stallone Movie Character Names
1. Machine Gun Joe Viterbo - Death Race 2000
2. Cosmo Carboni - Paradise Alley
3. Lincoln Hawk - Over the Top
4. Lt. Raymond Tango - Tango & Cash
5. Angelo ‘Snaps’ Provolone - Oscar
6. Deke DaSilva - Nighthawks
7. Judge Dredd - Judge Dredd
8. Robert Rath - Assassins
9. Henry ‘Razor’ Sharp - Grudge Match
10. Rocky Balboa - Rocky
11. John Rambo - Rambo
12. John Spartan - Demolition Man
13. Ray Quick - The Specialist
14. Johnny Kovak - F.I.S.T.
15. Kit Latura - Daylight
