Stirring enough to mute the flaws

Rating: 7/10 (11 March 2016)

Following the better-than-expected intended closure to the Rocky franchise, Rocky Balboa (2006). series star, writer and occasional director Sylvester Stallone was talked into moving the story forward. Stallone clearly has a lot of love for his characters - his revisiting of John Rambo in 2008 and his homage to the genre that made him a star, The Expendables, clearly confirm this - so whether it was this or the energy and potential of Fruitvale Station (2013) director Ryan Coogler that persuaded him to don the trilby and rubber ball once again is a mystery. Thankfully he did though, as Stallone gives a career best performance as the ageing, sickly icon, despite being relegated to a supporting character.
Creed instead focuses on, as the title obviously suggests, the son of former world champion and Rocky Balboa's arch-nemesis-turned- best-friend Apollo Creed. Adonis (Michael B. Jordan) was illegitimate; the product of Apollo's wandering eye, and when we first meet him he's causing a ruckus at an orphanage. Boxing is in his blood, and he's taken in by Apollo's sympathetic widow, who doesn't want to see Adonis suffer the same fate as her ex-husband. Unsatisfied with taking trips to Mexico to fight illegal bouts when he's not working his dull day job, Adonis decides to relocate to Philadelphia, where he plans to convince the one man who rose from nothing to become world champion to train him, Rocky Balboa.
Rocky is naturally apprehensive at first, but Adonis' determination and charm eventually convince him, but you get the sense that he secretly longs to be back in the action once again. Rocky essentially takes over Mickey's role, played by Burgess Meredith in previous instalments, as he tries to mould Adonis into a worthy successor to his father. The overbearing similarities to the first Rocky film from 1979 is Creed's major negative - it is essentially the same film only with dirt bikes and better camera-work - but Coogler stamps his own style onto the film too, putting his own spin on familiar scenes. It also treads dangerously close to cliché, as Adonis is offered a title fight after one professional match and courts the lovely R & B singer in the apartment below (Tessa Thompson).
Yet Creed is sufficiently stirring enough to mute the flaws, with the boxing scenes captured with style and electricity (one long-take is particularly impressive), and enough genuine emotion on show to engage you with the characters. The relationship between Rocky and the brash Adonis is extremely well-written, with Stallone performing with a subtlety seen in his best work (the original Rocky and Cop Land (1997)), and he was truly robbed of an Oscar here. Only the stoniest of hearts could fail to be moved by the scenes of Rocky at his most physically and emotionally vulnerable, even if you didn't grow up with the original films. While its far from perfect, Creed is a worthy addition to the Rocky universe, with Coogler again demonstrating why he's a director to watch and Jordan proving that even Fantastic Four will not damage his rise to stardom.