Dolph Lundgren’s forgotten comic book movie is a surprise Netflix hit

Dolph Lundgren may have shot to fame in the 1980s as yet another musclebound actor with limited dramatic capabilities, which was the style at the time, but his impressive academic background often gets overlooked when discussing his life and career.

The young Swede studied chemical engineering at Washington State University, gained his degree from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, graduated with a Master’s from the University of Sydney and was awarded a scholarship to the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology before his career took off after he met Grace Jones.

He single-handedly dispels the notion that action heroes are nothing but vapid meatheads, but his intelligence is rarely required for roundhouse kicking his enemies in the face or mowing down reams of henchmen. One of the lesser-known Lundgren facts is that he was the first name to play the Punisher in a live-action movie, which has probably been lost to the sands of time because it flopped at the box office and isn’t very good.

It’s effectively every B-level shoot em’ up you’ve ever seen with the added of bonus of being based on a Marvel Comics character, which was noted in the reviews at the time. It’s suitably violent and packed with wall-to-wall set pieces, though, which may go some way to explaining why it’s suddenly jumped 25 places on the Netflix most-watched list, as per FlixPatrol.