For those in the barren void of the know, I need to address a few truths. Some of them may or may not relate to the transcendental conundrum that is Dolph Hans Lundgren. But most of them do. Call them ‘home truths,’ call them what you will. If these things are not exposed at one point or another, they have a tendency to attract mildew. And I’m stuck with the cesspool of responsibility hanging near my internal organs.

Firstly, what is the deal with these vestigial annoyances that plague the tips of our fingers, these so-called nails? I remember not whether I have ever seen that area of Lundgren’s extremity, but it would not shock me to the pit of my spew-bag if it transpired that he had already evolved beyond these superfluous irritations.

Secondly, the man once famed for playing red savage to Stallone’s bald eagle patriot is now nesting in the director’s quadrant. That’s right. To this day, Lundgren has directed not one, but a duo of films, the first being 2004’s The Defender, where presumably he played right-back for some English kick-sport team. And shot people.

Following that debut in the chair marked “I am Lundgren, this is my chair, why’d they not bring me back for Universal Soldier 2, I don’t care if my character was dead, I am Lundgren,” he took a much needed rest of two days to ponder what his next filmic outing would be. After a bath in the juice of thirty virgins, the epiphanic hammer smacked him in the jowls and he knew, instinctively, what was to be done.

It is a truism to suggest that Lundgren used his eyes to engrave a nearby tree with the synopsis of what was to be his next cinematic bowel movement, but let it be said anyway. Tautologies aside, that synopsis proliferated in the Petri-dish of Lundgren’s frontal lobe over another three or four hours before he made the decision to begin shooting later that eve. With the burden of practicality bearing down upon his Swedish schnoz, he opted to tweak his drastic cineaste urgings and so declared that he’d hold off that visceral impulse for a day or two.

Turned out that that day or two till the commencement of primary shooting was in fact three days. But eventually work began on The Mechanik, as Lundgren entitled it, or The Russian Specialist, as some studio exec entitled it. Of course it’d be wrangling with the chains of the obvious to state in any clear manner that to which I prefer, so I leave it to the oblique reasoning of poetry to delineate any partiality:

The Mechanik, The Mechanik,
Wonders of the soul,
The Mechanik, The Mechanik,
Born of singular virtue.

The Russian Specialist, The Russian Specialist,
Shite title, shite title,
The Russian Specialist, The Russian Specialist,
I waft the putridity of Dean Cain’s reincarnated nappy-mess in your direction, cunt.