"He doesn't know it's a show. He thinks it's a damn fight!"

Rating: 10/10 (2 January 2010)

One gains a certain degree of perspective with the passage of time, and one of the things I like to do is watch a movie that I saw upon it's original release and compare my feelings for it now to those I experienced back in the day. I thought "Rocky" was a great and inspiring movie back in 1976, and with only the slightest bit of hesitation, I think it delivers the same feelings today. I throw in that slight hesitation part because over the years, the sports underdog theme has been worked to death in cinema. But the thing about "Rocky" is that it's not so much a film about boxing as it is a film about life in general. A direction-less man with no goals suddenly finds the gold ring handed to him on a platter. Not that there isn't a whole lot of work involved to make that dream come true, but one has to recognize opportunity in the first place. I read with some amusement the negative reviews of the picture on this board and have to wonder how many of the nay-sayers consider themselves so intellectually superior that they trash the film for that simple lack of recognition. Because criticizing Rocky Balboa for talking like he had a mouth full of marbles is missing the point. He talked like that because he was a street punk working as an enforcer for a local mob boss, and the people he dealt with on a daily basis weren't exactly magna cum laude types. Nor was he going up against members of mensa whenever he climbed through the ring ropes at a local boxing joint.
To prove he's not just another bum from the neighborhood, all Rocky wants to do, as he confesses to Adrian (Talia Shire) in that touching apartment scene, is go the distance with the champ. He doesn't have to knock him out, doesn't even have to win, just go the distance. You know, I still have to remind myself at times as I reflect on the picture that Rocky really didn't win the match. But he comes out a winner in the truest sense of the word, and that message blurs out the ring announcer's call of a split decision in favor of Apollo Creed. If there was no "Rocky II", (or III or IV or V), I wonder how many of the movie's fans would have been settled with the idea that Rocky Balboa actually became the world champion that day.