Dolph Lundgren from A to Z
I am not sure if Bulletproof Action has the most Dolph Lundgren content of all the sites on the Internet, but I definitely feel like we are in the conversation.
With today being Dolph Lundgren’s birthday, I wanted to continue our long standing tradition of Dolph Lundgren related posts, but I wanted to do something special. So it’s time to take a look at the life and time of Dolph Lundgren, from A to Z…
What better place to start than with Dolph’s first film appearance, 1985’s A View to a Kill. Dolph landed the small role of Venz, thanks to his then real life romantic relationship with Grace Jones, who played May Day in Roger Moore’s 007 swan song.
Dolph Lundgren’s collaboration with Director Isaac Florentine, 1999’s Bridge of Dragons, saw Dolph’s Warchild have to rescue a princess from the clutches of his malevolent mentor, General Ruechang (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa). Side note, Bridge of Dragons landed in the #5 spot on our Ultimate Nu Image Countdown.
Hey now, he’s a rock star! Dolph Lundgren played ex-biker and current rock-n-roll drummer, Joe Reynolds, who found himself in a Die Hard scenario at a charity concert in Moscow in 2009’s Command Performance.
Dark Angel (aka I Come in Peace) gave us a Dolph Lundgren as renegade cop, Detective Jack Caine, going up against Matthias Hues’ as Talec, an evil endorphin draining alien! As a bonus, Dark Angel is also a Christmas action movie, so be sure to give it a watch this upcoming holiday season.
Dolph Lundgren’s Gunner Jensen has worked with (and at one point against) his fellow Expendables in all four movies in The Expendables franchise. Gunner, much like the real life Dolph Lundgren, is formally educated as a Chemical Engineer.
He may not have had the logo, but Dolph Lundgren will always be my favorite live action version of Frank Castle aka The Punisher. Released in 1989, long before the days of the MCU and the mega-millions budgets, The Punisher was a beautifully violent and action packed B-movie that deserves more love from action and comic book fans.
To me Dolph Lundgren was at his best in 1992’s Universal Soldier. Dolph absolutely stole the show with his portrayal of the re-animated Andrew Scott aka GR13. From his supermarket soliloquy, to the big chase scene in the desert, to the final fight with Jean-Claude Van Damme’s GR44… Dolph was on his A game!
Whether you love or hate 1987’s Masters of the Universe, I don’t think anyone can deny that Dolph Lundgren was the best option to step into the mighty boots of He-Man! It’s like it was the role he was born to play. Dolph truly had the power!
It is the role that made Dolph Lundgren a household name… Rocky Balboa’s biggest and strongest foe, Ivan Drago! The Russian, Ivan Drago, had the dubious honor of being Apollo Creed’s final opponent and the damage Apollo suffered in his exhibition with Drago put him in an early grave… More than three decades after appearing in Rocky IV, Dolph would reprise the role of Ivan Drago for 2018’s Creed II.
1993’s Joshua Tree (aka Army of One) is one of the hidden gems in Dolph’s filmography, mostly because it didn’t receive the theatrical release it so richly deserved. Dolph plays Wellman Santee, a man framed by a dirty cop and sent to maximum security prison… only to break out and go after the aforementioned dirty cop (played by the late George Segal).
The most surprising piece of information that I uncovered while doing the research for this post, was that Dolph Lundgren had a guest spot on the long running CW series, Arrow… a show I never watched despite it seemingly being right in my wheelhouse. Dolph joined Arrow‘s fifth season playing General Konstantin Kovar in six episodes.
It was a hunter Dolph Lundgren versus a cryptozoologist Scott Adkins in a race to find a prehistoric alligator in 2013’s Legendary in ! I will never tire of a villainous Dolph and he brings a smugness to the role of Harker.
Another hidden gem in Dolph’s filmography is 1994’s Men of War. Nick Gunar (Dolph Lundgren) and a team of mercenaries journey to an island in the South China Sea looking for treasure. With a supporting cast full of familiar faces, Men of War deserves more love than it gets.
Dolph Lundgren was born Hans Lundgren in Stockholm, Sweden on November 3, 1957… unless you believe Wikipedia, then he was born in Long Beach, California?!!?
2022’s Operation Sea Wolf has Dolph Lundgren as Nazi submarine commander, Captain Hans Kessler, and an interesting premise with the Germans making a last ditch effort to defeat the Allies in the final days of World War II by taking their remaining U-Boats and heading for the continental United States!
At the top of my Dolph Lundgren Blu-ray wishlist is 1994’s Pentathlon. Lundgren plays Eric Brogar, an Olympic gold medalist who flees Communist East Germany and makes his way to the United States to begin a new life…only to have his past come back to haunt him!
Dolph made his triumphant return to the superhero movie genre in Queensland, Australia. A good chunk of 2018’s Aquaman was shot in Queensland with Dolph playing Aquaman’s father, King Nereus.
2004’s Retrograde has the dubious honor of being my least favorite Dolph Lundgren movie of all-time. I disliked it so much, I have repressed most of my memories of the movie. I do know it involved time travel and that Gary Daniels was also in it.
I may sound like a broken record at this point, but 1996’s Silent Trigger is yet another hidden gem in the filmography of Dolph Lundgren. Dolph’s Waxman is a former Special Forces soldier turned assassin who is betrayed by the secret government agency he works for.
Tia Carrere played Minako Okeya, the damsel in distress in 1991’s Showdown in Little Tokyo… a movie that saw Sgt. Chris Kenner (Dolph Lundgren) team up with Johnny Murata (Brandon Lee) to take down Funekei Yushida (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) and his Yakuza clan!
In 1982, Dolph Lundgren graduated with a master’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney.
Tony Vitayakul (Tony Jaa) is the Thai detective that teams up with New York City detective, Nick Cassidy (Dolph Lundgren) to take down a human trafficking network in 2014’s Skin Trade.
In 2024’s Wanted Man, Detective Travis Johansen (Dolph Lundgren) is sent to Mexico to extradite a witness who saw the murder of two DEA agents… but things don’t exactly go smoothly once Johansen gets South of the Border. Dolph not only starred in Wanted Man, he was also the director and one of the writers alongside, Bulletproof Action favorite, Michael Worth.
In 2007’s Diamond Dogs, Xander Ronson (Dolph Lundgren) is a mercenary hired by a group of American fortune hunters who are looking for a priceless Buddhist artifact in the Chinese wilderness… unfortunately for Ronson and his clients, some Russian mercenaries are after artifact too!
In 1998’s Sweepers, Yager (Ian Roberts) is the baddie in Angola, who uses landmines to threaten villagers, and finds himself at odds with Christian Erickson (Dolph Lundgren), the leader of the Humanitarian Order of Chivalry and Michelle Flynn (Claire Stansfield) , two people who lost loved ones thanks to landmines.
Joseph Zito was the director of 1988’s Red Scorpion, one of Dolph’s early starring roles. In Red Scorpion, Dolph played Spetsnaz commando, Lt. Nikolai Rachenko. Nikolai does not complete his mission to kill a rebel leader as instructed and that begins a series of life altering events that make Nikolai’s former allies, his new foes!
