Creed (12A.)
Directed by Ryan Coogler.
Starring Michael B Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad, Tony Bellew and Graham McTavish. 133 mins.
Here's an odd proposition for you – a serious Rocky film. There hasn't been one of them for four decades, maybe ever. (It won the Oscar – over Taxi Driver, Network, Bound for Glory, All The President's Men – but is Rocky really a serious film? It, and its sequels, are the male equivalent of Bette Davis/ Joan Crawford weepies.) A serious, stripped down Rocky film is like a back to basics Fast & Furious where they spend most of the film tuning up their motors – in a montage – and talking through their motivation for the big street race on Saturday rather than pulling off outrageous heists and crashing cars from one Dubai skyscraper to the next. Is that an F&F film you need to see?
The angle for Rocky 7 is to focus on the illegitimate son of Apollo Creed (Rocky's opponent who was killed in the ring by Dolph Lundgren's Drago in Rocky IV) and his attempts to make it as a boxer. Adonis (Jordan) walks away from a life of luxury and roughs it to Balboa's home town Philadelphia where he tries to enlist Rocky's help. Everybody is offended that he is breaking from the proscribed boxing narrative – poor kid from the streets who has to fight because he has no other way out. His is more of a Batman Begins journey.
One of the issues facing the film is that boxing is no longer a sport worthy of Rocky films. Rocky was born out of the era of Ali, Fraser and Foreman, not Tyson Fury; when boxing held the world's attention. (That said, Fury's underdog victory was Rockyesque, if only because the previously invincible Klitschko is today's Drago.) The film addresses the reduced circumstances of the fight game these days. In Creed the big star is a Scouser Ricky Conlon (Bellew) who has a prison sentence hanging over him for firearm offences, and the big fight is at the Everton football ground.
Creed is an intriguing attempt to translate cred into money. Director Coogler made his mark with the low budget Fruitvale Station. Being a hit at the Sundance film festival is one thing but Coogler wanted a real hit and he initiated the project and wrote the story, which is basically a remake of the original film. He brings a low key (comparative) realism to his Rocky film though in the middle he has one great sequence, a boxing match that is shot to look like one continuous take, the camera moving around getting right into the action and swooping around trying to capture the canopy of emotions at a boxing match.
He does best with the actors. The pairing of Bellew (an actual boxer with no previous acting experience) as Conlon and McTavish (an actual actor so effortlessly convincing to make you think he isn't) as his manager. At the heart of it is Stallone though: he just loves playing Rocky. It is odd though to see him pushed to a back up role. Stallone has a producer's credit but it isn't really his show. In Rocky Balboa he had, against all the odds, crafted a dignified exit for his favourite character. That film also seemed to present a subtext about the malign effect of black, hip hop culture on America. Here he is on hand to oversee an African American appropriation of his creation.
Directed by Ryan Coogler.
Starring Michael B Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad, Tony Bellew and Graham McTavish. 133 mins.
Here's an odd proposition for you – a serious Rocky film. There hasn't been one of them for four decades, maybe ever. (It won the Oscar – over Taxi Driver, Network, Bound for Glory, All The President's Men – but is Rocky really a serious film? It, and its sequels, are the male equivalent of Bette Davis/ Joan Crawford weepies.) A serious, stripped down Rocky film is like a back to basics Fast & Furious where they spend most of the film tuning up their motors – in a montage – and talking through their motivation for the big street race on Saturday rather than pulling off outrageous heists and crashing cars from one Dubai skyscraper to the next. Is that an F&F film you need to see?
The angle for Rocky 7 is to focus on the illegitimate son of Apollo Creed (Rocky's opponent who was killed in the ring by Dolph Lundgren's Drago in Rocky IV) and his attempts to make it as a boxer. Adonis (Jordan) walks away from a life of luxury and roughs it to Balboa's home town Philadelphia where he tries to enlist Rocky's help. Everybody is offended that he is breaking from the proscribed boxing narrative – poor kid from the streets who has to fight because he has no other way out. His is more of a Batman Begins journey.
One of the issues facing the film is that boxing is no longer a sport worthy of Rocky films. Rocky was born out of the era of Ali, Fraser and Foreman, not Tyson Fury; when boxing held the world's attention. (That said, Fury's underdog victory was Rockyesque, if only because the previously invincible Klitschko is today's Drago.) The film addresses the reduced circumstances of the fight game these days. In Creed the big star is a Scouser Ricky Conlon (Bellew) who has a prison sentence hanging over him for firearm offences, and the big fight is at the Everton football ground.
Creed is an intriguing attempt to translate cred into money. Director Coogler made his mark with the low budget Fruitvale Station. Being a hit at the Sundance film festival is one thing but Coogler wanted a real hit and he initiated the project and wrote the story, which is basically a remake of the original film. He brings a low key (comparative) realism to his Rocky film though in the middle he has one great sequence, a boxing match that is shot to look like one continuous take, the camera moving around getting right into the action and swooping around trying to capture the canopy of emotions at a boxing match.
He does best with the actors. The pairing of Bellew (an actual boxer with no previous acting experience) as Conlon and McTavish (an actual actor so effortlessly convincing to make you think he isn't) as his manager. At the heart of it is Stallone though: he just loves playing Rocky. It is odd though to see him pushed to a back up role. Stallone has a producer's credit but it isn't really his show. In Rocky Balboa he had, against all the odds, crafted a dignified exit for his favourite character. That film also seemed to present a subtext about the malign effect of black, hip hop culture on America. Here he is on hand to oversee an African American appropriation of his creation.
