Welcome Home, Champ

Rating: 8/10 (5 December 2015)

Well done Mike. You have erased Fant4stic from your resume.
You never know what you're gonna get with the seventh film in a franchise Well, I guess you do. They're usually terrible by this point. But frankly, Creed doesn't even feel like it's a part of the Rocky franchise. Just like Donny said, "I wanna make a name on my own."
Creed is a fantastic breath of fresh air into the often slow moving boxing genre, and a terrific beginning of what might be a new boxing franchise. Ryan Coogler gives another brilliant take in the directors chair, and he's a guy that just really understands characters and how to make us care for them. And that was no easy task in this movie, because Donny wasn't what I would call the most likable character in the world towards the first half of this film. It wasn't like in Rocky where we already liked the main character, Donny had to earn our respect just as how he had to earn it from the world of boxing, and he did so with flying colors.
The real triumph of this movie, however, is the return of Rocky Balboa. Stallone was unbelievably real and grounded that you were so easily able to forget that that guy's name isn't actually Rocky. I cared more about this character in Creed than I have in any of the previous 6 films, and Sly definitely gave the best performance of his career. And I loved that they kept all the little 'Rocky-isms' in there, like him bouncing the ball. Great attention to detail.
The best part of this film though, was the fights. Creed showcased some of the most intense and nerve-racking fight scenes I've seen in a boxing movie to date, and the first one in particular was just a masterclass in cinema. It was all shot in one take, and the sound editing (which I won't spoil) was so engrossing that it actually kind of startled me.
Verdict:
Creed was a brilliant addition to an aging franchise, and with force cemented Michael B. Jordan as a talent of the future. Stallone gave one of the most compelling and human performances of the year, and other than a few muddled motivations and character decisions, this movie was the whole package.