Article by Marta Mastrocinque

Translation by Maria Iacovone

Dolph: Unbreakable tells the life and career of Dolph Lundgren, starting from his most vulnerable moment: his illness. Andrew Holmes’ documentary opens and closes there, in the moment the actor – action cinema icon – stops being just a “tough guy” and becomes a man fighting in silence, still working, exercising and living.

The movie retraces a parable from university classrooms to karate gyms, from victories in competitions to the wild world of show business. We see Grace Jones, his first successes, and then, the meeting fated to change everything: the character of Ivan Drago in Rocky IV (Sylvester Stallone, 1985). We see the auditions, the training with Sylvester Stallone, the rapid rise of a disciplined boy who grew up with a difficult father and in an environment that would have broken many people, but not him. The core of the documentary, however, is the diagnosis of an aggressive tumor. Ineffective therapies, grim prospects, the true fear of not making it. The breakthrough comes thanks to doctor Alexandra Drakaki from UCLA, who identifies the mutation responsible for the illness and opens the way for a new treatment, capable of restoring hope in just a few weeks. And while the body fights, Lundgren keeps on shooting films – including Expendables (Scott Waugh, 2023) – without ever turning his condition into entertainment. There are colleagues and friends talking about him: Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Randy Couture. Their words compose an affectionate mosaic, made of respect and esteem for a man who always recovers his balance.

Today, at sixty-eight years old, Lundgren continues to act and direct. Unbreakable conveys an image of a full life, marked by victories, downfalls and rebirths. It’s the portrait of a real fighter, not because he has always won, but because he has never stopped trying.

Article published on “la Repubblica Torino” on November 23rd 2025