Red Scorpion

Red Scorpion (1988) is an action film directed by Joseph Zito — watch it online on iFILM. Dolph Lundgren plays Nikolai Rachenko, an elite Soviet special forces operative sent to an unnamed African country with orders to kill the leader of a rebel movement threatening Communist influence in the region.

The mission collapses fast. Nikolai is set up, cut loose by his own commanders, and left to survive in the bush alongside the people he was sent to eliminate. M. Emmet Walsh plays an American journalist caught in the same crossfire. Shot on location in Namibia and South Africa, the film has the sweeping desert scale of a war picture, not a studio action shoot.

Cold War action cinema at its most literal — no subtext, no irony, just Lundgren in the African savanna switching sides and settling scores. Stream Red Scorpion (1988) online on iFILM.