Director: Sylvester Stallone
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Burt Young, Antonio Tarver, Milo Ventimiglia
Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. The thought that Stallone had one more good Rocky film in him was too tantalizing to pass up. Something about the film stuck with me after it was first released, and I might have been tempted to put it as the second-best film in the original, just ever-so-slightly chasing after the heels of the original Rocky (1976).
Did I Like It: And he did! While it’s at best a fraction of the movie that Creed (2015) eventually became, that’s only because Ryan Coogler is one of the greatest filmmakers to come to prominence in the last twenty years, whereas Stallone is an—often underrated—journeyman behind the camera.
Gone are the increasingly thin justifications to put Balboa back in the ring that increasingly dogged the previous three sequels, and the on-spec silly idea of an over-60 Balboa climbing into the ring one final, final time almost makes sense. It also helps—or at least improves things in comparison with Rocky V (1990)—that while Antonio Tarver isn’t the greatest actor who ever lived, he’s a more engaging screen presence than poor Tommy Morrison could ever hope to be.
Everything this improved here. If there’s a movie that can make me forget, if only for a moment, that I find Stallone on average to be a bit irritating, that’s an automatic recommendation. Had the out-of-focus image of Balboa waving to Adrian’s (Talia Shire; she might not have gotten a paycheck, but she sure as hell is all over the film), that might have been fine. Stallone had managed to get back to basics, not just in featuring a movie that doesn’t resort to comic-book contrivances*, but in making us feel for the underdog again. We may not be able to punch like the Stallion, but we’ve all got steps we’ve got to climb when conventional wisdom says we cannot or should not.
I may not care for Stallone very much, but I have a tremendous amount of affection for Rocky Balboa, and Rocky Balboa. I mean, it paved the way for Creed, so there’s at least something there.
*I’m not saying I’m not a fan of comic-book contrivances. I’m only saying that they feel more at home with Rambo, not Rocky.