A Boxing Film For Non Boxers

Rating: 5/10 (4 April 2019)

It's not a bad movie, the scenes are largely well shot (Outside of the ring), the acting is largely ok, the set, consume, lighting all ticks the right boxes. Where this goes wrong is the plot is very weak, and it is pointlessly weak.
Victor Drago, the son of Ivan Drago is fighting in warehouses in the Ukraine, spotted by a promoter, next thing he is in the US challenging the World Heavyweight Title holder (Adonis Creed).
So here is the rub, no back street warehouse fighter is ever going to get a shot at the world heavyweight title because he has no fight lineage. Victor would need to be on the rankings to get a title sanctioned shot, and yet he's fought no one that is a contender. This means the premise is pretty silly, as is the idea that some big warehouse fighter could actually KO a tier one boxer.
All they needed to do to fix this was show the rise of Victor through the rankings and establish some sort of fearsome KO trend that really built press support for the fight between him and Creed.
On the boxing side, Rocky seems to have one game plan in every fight - learn to take a lot of damage because the more damage you take the more impervious you become to it??? Yep that is like telling a tyre, the more worn down you get the more impervious to getting worn down you become. Oh, and lifting weights, getting bulked up, all that is critical in boxing, forget the fact that the worlds greatest boxers can slip and cover (Think Sugar Ray, Mayweather etc) so they are new impossible for meathead fighters to hit.
The strength of the Rocky franchise has always rested in the humanity of Rocky and his struggle with life and poverty, his desire to overcome his life challenges etc. Stallone has over stretched this in the past, the movies moved from the great breakout of Rocky 1 and 2 to the increasingly silly 4 and 5 and whatever the heck that come back in your 60's was called. Trading off the past success and building new chapters that lack the story integrity only serves to weaken the memory of the former films. But, i'm sure they made good at the box office.
Creed 2 is a movie that could've been much better, and it wouldn't have cost much if anything to fix the plot holes.
Creed 2 still suffers from unbelievable boxing scenes where a fighter is punched full in the face with huge shots and takes several of them shaking them off. Neither Creed not Drago look like good boxers in this movie, they look like meatheads throwing big shot combo's. There is no finesse, but hey it is a movie. However, because the backstory building to the fight is so weak, the belief in it undermines the out of the ring content about family life, rocky and him missing Adrian, the minor piece about the light not working - those more real to life elements are weakened by being attached to the silliness in the core premise.
The Creed movies are a nice attempt at extending the brand life of Rocky, although it really is time to call it a day now.