Decent entry into the Rocky film canon

Rating: 7/10 (25 November 2018)

The film opens with Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) winning a title bout and becoming the heavyweight champion. In contrast to Adonis's life as a wealthy, celebrated champion, in Ukraine father and son Ivan and Viktor Drago live in poverty as the younger Drago tries to make a name for himself beating other fighters in the ring. Both father and son are bitter over their family's lost glory, and the abandonment of both by Ludmilla (Brigitte Nielsen), Ivan's former wife and Vicktor's mother.
After the successful championship fight, Adonis proposes to his girlfriend Bianca (Tessa Thompson), who has been perusing a music career despite auditory problems which require her to wear hearing aids. Adonis Creed is a man on top of the world, but things change when a promoter holds a televised news conference in which the newly-minted champ is challenged to fight Viktor Drago. It was Viktor's father, Ivan, who killed Adonis's father during a fight three decades previously before being defeated himself in a grudge match with Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), who is now Adonis's trainer.
Though it seems that none of the people in his life want Adonis to agree to the match, he decides to do it anyway, a decision that leads to a falling out between him and Rocky, who remembers all too well the dangers of battling a Drago, not only from his own bout with Ivan, but also from watching his friend Apollo Creed die in the ring. This parting of the ways is painful for both men: Rocky has become the stand-in for the father whom Adonis never knew, while Adonis has become a surrogate son for the older man, whose relationship with his own son has deteriorated.
Adonis and Bianca move to the West Coast, where he starts training under Tony "Little Duke" Burton (Wood Harris), whose father once trained the legendary Apollo Creed. As Adonis prepares for the match he learns that Bianca is pregnant with their first child.
In the first match-up between Adonis and Viktor, Adonis is outmatched by the pure power of his opponent, and while he retains his title due to Viktor's actions leading to a disqualification, Adonis is broken in both body and spirit, and everyone know that he truly lost the match.
Rocky visits Adonis; though their relationship has been strained they patch things up, and after he's had time to heal both Rocky and Burton train Adonis harder than ever before to prepare him for a rematch against Viktor. In the meantime Bianca gives birth to their child, a daughter, who they fear may be afflicted by the same hearing problems as her mother.
Back in their home country, both Ivan and Viktor are now feted by the same people who spurned their family after Ivan's loss to Rocky all those years ago. Though Viktor isn't crazy about these people who showed his family no respect when they were down, Ivan seems to crave their approval, and wants his son to bring home the championship belt.
Finally we get the rematch, in which two men for whom failure is not an option square off, both putting everything they have into the fight.
While the film is not as strong as it's predecessor, it's a good movie and steers clear of of much of the cheesiness that plagued some of the sequels to the original Rocky movie.