Rocky films have changed a lot over the years as the silver screen has tracked the Italian Stallion’s life from his youthful title shot with Apollo Creed through all of the challenges of his career, retirement, widowhood and old age. In the latest movie, Creed, we get a whole new direction for the series and the possibility of a new hero to cheer on as the Bill Conti-inspired music blares out over the toe-to-toe action.
The story takes the movie back to the basics of the very first Rocky movie, as Adonis “Donnie” Johnson tries to follow in his dad’s footsteps and become a boxer. Born as a result of an affair not long after his father’s death at the clubbing hands of Ivan “if he dies, he dies” Drago, he has a troubled juvenile detention childhood before being tracked down and taken in by Apollo’s wife, Mary Anne, played now by Phylicia Rashad (The Cosby Show), replacing Sylvia Meals from the original films.
The plot gets into its stride when Donnie moves to Philadelphia and manages to persuade Rocky to train him, and as opposition try to cash in on either the Balboa or the Creed legacy he goes on to get a surprise title shot. However, what runs through it all is a genuine attempt to try to ground the film in a sense of real life, whether its dealing with loss and illness, working on a relationship or facing the challenge of trying to live for your dreams. It’s this factor that has won the film so many plaudits and it makes for a very approachable movie no matter what walk of life you’re from.
Sylvester Stallone is as strong as ever as the character that has gone on to define his acting career. He’s refined his performance as the much older Rock, still living in the same neighbourhood he started in way back in 1976, taking care of his restaurant and visiting the graves of his wife Adrian and her brother Paulie. There’s definitely a sad and faded element to the development of the character, but there’s also a clear thread that links into a similar unbreakable spirit that makes Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man And The Sea such a brilliant novella.
The new contender is played by Michael B. Jordan, who does a much better job as Adonis Creed than he did as Johnny Storm in The Fantastic Four (2015). There’s a solidity to his performance that makes the film feel real, despite the quick, out-of-nowhere progression of his boxing career. He has some great chemistry with Stallone on screen, referring to him as Unc, and his romance with singer song-writer, Bianca, played with equal empathy by Tessa Thompson (Selma), is delivered with natural sentiment. He doesn’t necessarily always look like a boxer, despite his buffed out frame, and he struggles with the top end of enthusiasm, but he’s shown a good amount of potential in the complexities of the role.
With Academy Award nominations and a raft of positive reviews from the earlier US release, Creed came with a certain amount of hype, but it just doesn’t land quite as well in the UK with a Liverpudlian accent for Creed’s main opponent, “Pretty” Ricky Conlan. Graham McTavish (The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies) puts in a good shift as his trainer, Tommy Holiday, but the Goodison Park venue and references to Everton Football Club don’t work very well and feel out of keeping with the history of the series. It might as well have been a car park in Grimsby for the amount of juxtaposition it delivers and as a device to make it all feel like the real world of boxing, which in all fairness is big in the UK, it just misses mark.
The cinematography is very impressive though and delivers some stunning shots of Philadelphia, as well as providing incredible action sequences in the ring. If we were being critical, we’d probably say that the rotating close-up camera panning is fractionally over-used, but in general it’s a very well shot movie with an incredible eye for action, emotion and little detail from director of photography, Maryse Alberti (The Wrestler).
Creed is a decent new entry in the Rocky canon and though it doesn’t have the epic training montages that made Rocky III and IV such great fun to watch it does return to the more down-to-earth appearance of the first two films. If you’re a massive fan of the series this isn’t a bad shout to add to your watch list if you haven’t already.
Creed review: 3.8/5
