Maybe the protagonists and antagonists should change places.

Rating: 1/10 (16 February 2019)

Oh man.
We kind of expected it to follow a formulaic plot where the hero loses and then wins in the end. But what this movie does to fill out the in-betweens is so crammed full of cliches you couldn't fit in a fart even if you wanted to.
I actually rooted for the Drago father-son duo. Accidental? Not so much. We've a protagonist who is very unlikeable. Just because he's the lead doesn't mean we must like him automatically. He comes across as unsympathetic. In this second installment he just comes across as a spoiled brat.
And what's up with the wife? They just had a child and she feels the need to "get out of the house" and go to the studio or something. Do new mothers relate to that? Cos that was a huge talking point among the group of friends i went to see the movie with, mostly friends of my wife. I think that happened so that we could have that scene of Adonis alone with his child but there could've been better ways to bring that about. The story writers gave her this hearing-impairement issue which is passed on to their daughter, maybe to make her more sympathetic. But it doesn't elicit that response. And her singing as her husband walks towards the ring was so cringeworthy. It even ended abruptly. She had her music and that could've been written into the story better.
As for Ivan and Victor, they were the true underdogs in this movie. A father fallen from grace, left by his wife and abandoned by his country, living vicariously through his son's victories, looking for redemption. The movie tries to portray Victor as a brute with barely a line the entire movie but this relationship had potential for so much more friction between a father driving his son to serve his own needs and a son who's a man in his own right who could've had interesting clashes with his father. But no, the movie needs us to root for the heroes so apart from their training montages we rarely see much of the Drago's relationship.
And the Russians. The wife and entourage stand up and walk out before the match is over. And the son and father lose heart. I get that Ivan's point this whole time has been to get his ex-wife's approval/respect and his country's acceptance again but that story is so poorly written it just doesn't hit. With a runtime of over two hours, they should've done better.
The fight scenes are also poorly choreographed and edited it looks uninteresting. Maybe an actor more the size of Adonis for a better suited match would've been interesting. To make Victor that much more bigger for the sake of villanous threat was a mismatch.
I actually wanted Victor to win. The movie was that bad.