Rocky Balboa
Monday, 22 Jan 2007 08:45
Rocky is back for one final round
Directed by Sylvester Stallone, out now, starring Sylvester Stallone, Burt Young and Antonio Tarver, running time 102 minutes.
In a nutshell
Age-defying, fist-pounding escapism.
What's it all about?
Rocky Balboa is the sixth movie in a franchise that started more than 30 years ago. It finds our hero, former two-time heavyweight champion of the world, Rocky Balboa, retired from boxing and running a small Italian restaurant in his home town of Philadelphia named after his dead wife, Adrian.
Now in his 50s, Rocky spends his days visiting old neighbourhood haunts, reminiscing about his life with Adrian and entertaining diners with boxing tales. He has an awkward relationship with his son, Rocky Junior, who is finding it hard to make his own way in the world with his father's celebrity casting a shadow over everything he does.
Still living in the past, Rocky is weighed down by a great sadness. Some of what he carries is grief for Adrian, but he also feels he has more to give – "something in the basement," as he tells Paulie, unfinished business in the ring that can help him exorcise his demons and go out on a high.
Meanwhile, the current world champion, Mason "The Line" Dixon, may be undefeated, but with no worthy opponents to take him on, he is also unappreciated. Dixon has the sports cars, the giant TV and the hip-hop entourage, but not the respect of the fans or the place in history he craves.
After a computer simulation suggests Dixon would have lost to Rocky when the "Italian Stallion" was in his prime, his promoters smell a big pay day and a chance to earn their man some positive publicity by putting the two fighters in the ring for real.
Who's in it?
Sylvester Stallone reprises the role that launched his movie career back in the mid-70s. He writes, directs and stars in the final instalment of perhaps the greatest saga of the golden age of the action hero.
Sly is supported by former light-heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver (who plays his opponent Mason "The Line" Dixon), Burt Young (returning as Rocky's wide-boy brother-in-law, Paulie) and Milo Ventimiglia (taking Serge Stallone's place as Rocky Junior).
As an example
In the build up to the fight:
Dixon: It's over
Rocky: It ain't over 'til it's over
Dixon: What's that, from the 80s?
Rocky: Probably, more like the 70s
Before the final round:
Dixon: You are one crazy old man
Rocky: You'll get there
Likelihood of a trip to the Oscars
Probably not, but who cares? This is wonderful escapism and one last chance for us all to experience the sweat-popping training montage, the goosebump-inducing score and the teeth-rattling main event that Rocky fans grew up with. Expect HMV to be sold out of the DVD box sets.
What others say
"If you hear the Rocky theme and think '118 118', you might wonder what all the fuss is about. For the rest of us, this is a reminder of why we fell in love with the character in the first place." - Ian Freer, Empire
"The Rocky Balboa you were hoping for, dreaming for, and an astonishing personal triumph for Stallone. Bring on Rambo IV?" - Jonathan Crocker, Total Film
So is it any good?
Rumour has it that Stallone was never happy with Rocky V and he wasn't alone. Nobody wanted to see Rocky lose all his money and wind up training a protégé who looked like Michael Bolton on steroids. It's taken him 16 years to put it right and thankfully, he has.
With Rocky Balboa, Stallone pays his final respects to the character that made him. As a struggling actor, he refused to sell the script for the first Rocky movie until he was allowed to play the lead. Three decades later and Stallone may have been one of the richest movie stars on the planet, but the studios weren't exactly queuing up to make a boxing film starring a 60-year-old.
But Stallone got himself in amazing physical shape and came up with a heart-warming script and an entertaining story that seems as fitting an end to the Rocky saga as any fan could hope for.
The character is one that Stallone clearly identifies with, created at a time when boxing fans who grew up watching the great Rocky Marciano wondered if they would ever see his like again. In the early 70s, people loved Muhammad Ali, but with all the great man's poetry, his arrogance and his self-promotion, there were those who harked back to the days of the more uncomplicated fighters.
Stallone's Rocky has always been just that. He was never meant to be a particularly good boxer. Much shorter than a traditional heavyweight, he was a slugger, with a hard head and a big heart. And it is for these reasons that the films have been such a huge success.
Movie fans, like fight fans, love a hero who feels like one of them. Rocky is not a superhuman monster like some of his opponents, but a working class brawler who never knows when he's beaten.
As he tells his son, "it's not how hard you hit, it's how hard you get hit and keep moving forward". In Rocky Balboa, Rocky feels like life has dealt him a few big right-hooks of late, but he's still moving forward and the only place he knows how to do that is in the ring.
Rocky Balboa is fantastic entertainment and the perfect way to say goodbye to a character who beat-up Mr T and Hulk Hogan (Rocky III) and helped end the Cold War (Rocky IV).
It banishes the bad memories of Rocky V and ensures that Hollywood's greatest sporting underdog goes out as he, and Stallone, wanted: with blood on his face and the sound of a devoted crowd chanting "Rocky, Rocky" ringing in his ears.
9/10
Adam Barber
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