Boxing sequel comes out with fists up...and keeps them there.

Rating: 9/10 (8 December 2018)

Hindsight is always 20/20 - at least according to Billy Wilder, who knew a thing or two about directing great movies.
Perhaps the producers of Creed II (also producers of the original Rocky series, from which this new boxing film series has been sired) had that rapier-sharp insight when approaching how to make a sequel to the 2015 'son of Carl Weathers' blockbuster.
Where the original Rocky sequel was degraded with syrupy gabble about settling down, buying a house and making babies, the first Creed sequel has bypassed that mucus for a better scripted, sharper return to the ring.
Stunning performances all round, especially Stallone and Jordan but most impeccably (and surprisingly) from a near-sociopathically deranged Lundgen who returns as the Russian "breaker" Ivan Drago.