Fresh fights for Rocky and the Balboa clan, but most of the 'hard hitting' you'll see is the depiction of their living conditions.

Rating: 6/10 (12 April 2013)

The ground that the Rocky films have treaded has become so visibly worn; so evidently eroded, that one might just as well usurp the Rocky statue perched at the top of those concrete steps over there in Philadelphia and entrench it beside the path synonymous with this franchise, so that whenever a screenwriter decides to traverse said path, may they be reminded just where they're headed. Then again, maybe those steps ARE indeed the physical manifestation of such a path, and the statue is in the right place anyway; a public thoroughfare whose appearance in these Rocky films is about as expected as the training montages and the 'final fight' sequence. It is pleasing, then, to be able to say that the positives outweigh the negatives in 1990's Rocky V; a very, very goofy film but not totally devoid of quality. What indeed appears to merely be old ground once again being traversed turns out to be a film mostly about a family and about relationships people have outside of the ring It is to this extent one dares to say that upon its release, Rocky V was the best Rocky film since the '76 original.
The film will kick off with Stallone's Rocky Balboa arriving back in America following his brutal fight with Dolph Lundgren's young Soviet that climaxed the last film. A national hero, Rocky is barely off the airport grounds before a press conference is called in a hangar such is the demand - but our eponymous boxer skirts informing them of the health issues he has due to his taking of all the Russian punishment and additionally shies away from a fresh challenge from an exuberant black promoter; their tough young runt fighter and a shady looking white agent. Actually, it is his wife Adrian (Shire) doing all the talking in this regard, and we're reminded again of the last film when Drago's partner did all of his talking at his conferences. Looking forward to retirement in his huge Philadelphia mansion chock full of mementos and his loving family, disaster strikes when it's revealed someone as reckless; knock-about and often drunk as Paulie (Burt Young, Adrian's brother and Rocky's brother in law) has botched all of their money away to an accountant and his bad real estate schemes. Leaving his financial adviser's office, Rocky and Adrian walk over a reflection on the floor made by a circular window just above them: the design has it look like they're walking through a sniper's crosshair as the elements zero in on them. With no money, Stallone troops his characters back to their greyer, bleaker beginnings – wherein Adrian worked in a pet shop and Balboa himself paid regular trips to Burgess Meredith's old sparring gym: there is a flashback of unrealistic proportions in length once he's back there when he remembers a little too much of a training session he once had with Meredith.
Things plough on and Balboa's son, Rocky jnr (played by Stallone's real life son Sage), winds up at a school that sees him have to deal with a bully problem via his fists –perhaps designed to echo how his father and Apollo Creed were once rivals until they came to mutually appreciate one another through their time spent fighting. Mirroring the realism in Stallone casting his own son to play his son is true-to-life boxer Tommy Morrison playing Tommy Gunn, a well-spoken and enthusiastic young fighter from Oklahoma who turns up looking for Balboa, his idol, to coach him into a being a professional. I even read that Morrison took up boxing after seeing the original Rocky film anyway reinforcing this more grounded, realistic tract the film has. There is this sense that, having gone through the pain barriers and having climbed the ladder culminating in a fight abroad with the likes of Ivan Drago, there is nowhere else to go after representing one's county. That final composition of Rocky IV that features a Stars-and-Stripes draped Balboa having conquered the Communist enemy, one of the franchise's more famous images, could be seen as the culmination of a man's career: where does one go from there?
In spite of the evident hypothesis, the film is not without its faults, although its positives outweigh its negatives. The strand about Rocky's son falling out with Rocky out of not paying him enough interest is weak: your father's working, leave him alone, while this manic idea the film seems to think is more substantial than it actually is, that Gunn is replacing Rocky junior as the son-like figure, is just silly. What tries to make itself apparent, however, is the notion of just how much Gunn hated his own father when he was younger, and if the film would like Balboa to adopt this fatherly/mentoring role for Gunn where he is substituting his own son, the later rivalry between the two carries with it this dynamic of resurfaced spite on Gunn's behalf.
But we enjoy the film overall, it feels more mature than the previous sequels; as if it's telling a movie about sports and those involved in sports instead of a movie with sports in it. This atmosphere of things shifting; things moving on is apparent by the hour mark, when Gunn fills in as the film's protagonist for a while and the young, Creed/Lang-lite black challenger from the opening has been pushed out of proceedings as the potential opponent for Rocky's latest bout. When the final fight does eventually come around, we observe the film's final act of resistance to submitting to hardened formula when it arrives in the form of a street fight more-so an official, ring set clash. Ultimately, the series has not been as toned down as this since its first film, and Rocky V is all the more better because of it.