Coming Home

Rating: Null/10 (25 November 2015)

One of the greatest gifts that the movies can give back is the feeling of coming home. Few movies are worth the return trip, but when done right we get the joy of reuniting with old friends, catching up years later and seeing how their lives turned out. There are a few movies from my childhood that formed my passion for this crazy medium that are worth revisiting, and there are few characters that I enjoy revisiting quite like Rocky.
You'd think that by this sixth sequel the series would now be just a giant parody of itself, but Stallone reeled it back in 2006 with Rocky Balboa and he does it again here. You can feel the passion that he has for this character and his world. These movies are, if nothing else, proof that given the right material Stallone can really act.
Creed is one of the most beautiful sequels I've ever seen. It contains the dark corners that made the original special. It has an agenda that seems to be more than just to ride the coattails a famous series – and remember this is the seventh movie! We see real characters on the screen. We feel for their plight. We love these people. Director Ryan Coogler isn't satisfied to let the film lay on its side and just purr with nostalgia, he wants this story to breathe with a life and energy all its own.
Coogler, I am sure, knows that he can easily get by on nostalgia alone, but he'd be making a very bad movie. After the poetic beauty of Rocky Balboa nine years ago, which wrote the final chapter for Rocky, this chapter turns the story in a different direction. We meet a troubled kid, Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan) an orphan who has landed himself in a juvenile detention center. A woman comes to visit him, Mary Anne Creed (Phylicia Rashad), the wife of the late Apollo Creed. Adonis learns that he is the product of an extra-marital one-night stand that Apollo had not long before his fatal bout with Ivan Drago. Yet, despite Apollo's transgression, Mary Ann pulls Adonis – nicknamed Donnie – out of the narrow destiny of guns, drugs, and swagger and gave him a chance at a productive life.
Years go and destiny calls Donnie's name. He begins making money by boxing secretly in Tijuana making his own name but never telling anyone about his famous lineage. He wants to be he his own man, and not be just a hitch upon a famous father that he never knew. Leaving home, Donnie finds himself – where else? – Philadelphia. Determined to make his way in the boxing world he looks up Rocky, now pushing 70, at his restaurant and asks him to train him.
What happens is not all that surprising if you're a veteran of this series. What is surprising is how human his story is. Rocky now deals with his own mortality – his extended family is gone and his world is basically empty, and he's dealing with issues of his own mortality – there's a development that I won't spoil.
Adonis' fire and determination are an eerie shadow of his old man. The flow of the film is that each character is given one dimension more than just their service to the story. For example, Adonis gets a girlfriend Bianca (Tessa Thompson) a musician who is building a music career before she succumbs to a progressive hearing loss. She stands by Donnie but she's more than just a fixture. There's a feeling that she's lived as hard a life as he. There's a grace to her character that makes us want to see her succeed.
The arc of the film is Donnie's troubling family name. He keeps the name Johnson, but never tells anyone about his famous father. Once he's outed offers pour in for major fights because everyone wants to cash in on the name. But Rocky doesn't want to see the kid get destroyed by bad decisions, and that becomes the crux of the relationship between the wise old man and the hot-headed young kid.
This is a beautifully made film. It has edges and corners that we don't expect. Even the familiar formulas of the other films feel fresh and new. The final bout between Donnie and a British bruiser named "Pretty Ricky" Conklin feels original. All boxing movies have a final fight, but the great directors know how to tell the story inside the ring. Here we understand what his happening and what is at stake at every single moment, making this one of the most exciting cinematic boxing matches since Raging Bull. I was so happy that the filmmakers had the intelligence not to put Rocky back in the ring – it's not his story. This is the story of the rise of a kid determined to climb out of the shadow of a father so lionized by history that it might be easy for him to simply skate by. Donnie has a lot of demons to battle and a lot of pressures to overcome.
Essays can be written about this movie. It steps right where other sequels step wrong. This far into a series we might expect that it had spun its wheels until they come off, but by twisting the focus the screenwriters have written a new chapter here. There are themes to be explored not just about determination but about battling this thing called life and making decisions that will chart the course of destiny. Plus it's also about coming home. The best movies do that, they allow us to come back around and see the great characters pressed by the adamant of time. He's home again, and so are we. This is one of the best films of the year.