The Other Guy Now

Rating: Null/10 (11 January 2010)

It is taking me longer than I expected to march through the Rocky corpus. That is because — I think — it is so unrewarding.
What we are supposed to get, as Stallone has said now for decades, is Stallone. He has persevered and won. He has been thrown off by success. He has returned. And then the desires: he desires recognition, height and admiring love. What we want in return is for him to grow, for us to be rewarded for investing in his life. Simply put, we will sit through this autobiographical drek if the man were interesting — or at least normal but revealed in an interesting way.
Well, I am finding him a bore, and these movies lifeless. The story is the same in each; the same buttons, the same faces even. Of the four I have seen, this one has two unique things.
There is a fight scene at the beginning with Hunk Hogan. It does not fit into the story template and likely is there as a space and energy filler. It is not referenced in the rest of the story, nor does it illuminate any element of it. Its just stuck in. It is extraordinarily well done though. The climax of these Rocky films is the boxing at the end. The original film had some energy because it was the first time we saw a steadicam. And the boxing was unusual and a but thrilling because it seemed real and brutal.
But we tired. By the time of this film, Scorcese had done "Raging Bull" which is a sort of touchstone for cinematic immediacy in the ring. DePalma was still 15 years away from "Snake Eyes," which handles the rest of the world. What to do?
Well, Stallone has certain limits physically. Boxing has certain limits as well which unfortunately do not help Stallone. It is as repetitive as golf or tennis, but the overall event sometimes has a carnally carnivorous ebb and flow. But we know how it will end.
This inserted fight has the same Rocky, the same ring, the same mumbling. The same crew and their photographic philosophy. But it isn't boxing. It has energy — amazement, what seems like real pain. The man may be dumb and play dumb. But he has an awareness of the physics of spectators. And that's impressive. I wonder what he did with Rambo?
Oh. The other thing is a pretty delicate scripting about race. Boxing often is about hate, racial hate. You see two thugs up there pounding each other; if one is black and the other white, the respective communities emboss tribal associations on their players. The previous Rockys exploited this, apparently without thinking about it. This one does some pretty fancy footwork on the race stuff. A lot of attention went into splitting the black faces into the same symmetries we saw in the ring. Apollo Creed is redeemed. Paulie, the guy who we already know is our measure of "getting things wrong" is shown to be a racist, and we casually brush that off as simply being wrong.
Bad movie. Really bad. But a couple indications that the guy knows his cinema.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.