Creed

Rating: 8/10 (6 February 2016)

Creed found a solid and interesting premise to resurrect the Rocky franchise, with a minimum ret-con and a modern sensibility which doesn't alter the spirit of its predecessors. Well, "resurrect" might not be the correct word. Strictly speaking, Creed is more like a spin-off in which the legendary Rocky Balboa limits himself to train a boxer with talent with few experience. Basically, Sylvester Stallone inherits the role played by Burgess Meredith in the original Rocky back in 1976 (in fact, Stallone is the same age in Creed as Meredith was back then... and there's no need to say how much that little coincidence surprised me). However, Rocky makes an influence on every scene, enriching the tale without imposing himself and generally avoiding manifestations of excessive nostalgia. I say "generally" because, among the cons of Creed, I have to mention some forced recreations of some iconic elements in the Rocky saga; for example, that famous race on the streets, and the use of the majestic music we all remember. I'm not saying they are badly used... I simply found them arbitrary nostalgic whims. But well, that complaint didn't affect the emotive and very satisfactory experience offered by Creed. Michael B. Jordan occupies the leading role with credibility and huge charisma (not to mention discipline... I can barely imagine the effort required to shoot a whole fight without any camera cuts), while Stallone carries his age with dignity and doesn't try to hide it; on the opposite, he takes advantage of his age in order to portray Rocky's evolution, always consistent with his nature and the facts established the last time we had seen him in the film Rocky Balboa, without forgetting the small humorous details which enhance his humanity. On the negative side, the romantic sub-plot feels unnecessary. Tessa Thompson brings a good performance and she's undoubtedly attractive, but the connection her character has with the main one feels obligatory and not very natural. And the adversary isn't very well developed either; actor Tony Bellew brings quite a personality to "Pretty" Ricky Conlan, the arrogant boxing champion who needs an important fight as a public relations strategy after some legal slips; unfortunately, the movie dedicates him very little time, and the exciting final fight might have had some more impact if we had known the opponent better. On the other hand, I know that the point of Creed doesn't exclusively lie on reaching the "big fight", but also creating a touching relationship between Adonis and Rocky, each one of them filling the holes in the life of the other one on some way. And on that aspect, I found Creed recommended, very entertaining and worthy as a continuation/tangent of a franchise with such many followers. I don't think it's as good as the original Rocky, but I consider it superior to any of the other sequels (specially Rocky III, IV and V). I would like to finish this review with a boxing analogy, but I'm afraid I don't know too much about that sport. Oh, there's one which just came to my mind: Creed is a knockout! Start the count to twelve, please.