Sylvester Stallone must have broken some kind of unenviable record for remaking the same movie, even if Rocky was a legitimately decent film with a good script penned by Sly himself. He takes a co-screenwriting credit for this one, but one suspects this is more a nod to the fact that he created the scenario than anything. The plot — Apollo Creed’s son, now champion, pitched against Ivan Drago’s (Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV’s) son — is contrived, to say the least, and some of the backstory revealed in awkward expository dialogue — but Stallone looks good for 62, and looks, and delivers a line, like no one else, even if it’s the same performance as every other movie he’s made, which commands, if not respect exactly, then at least the attention.
A grizzled Lundgren phones in his robotic performance, but what on earth did you expect? The actor playing his son is a muscle-bound hulk who would have appeared less out of place as a pro wrestler, and is badly miscast. I’ve never seen Michael B Jordan previously in anything but Creed trailers, but he acts and boxes convincingly, and looks like he would have stopped Stallone in his prime within about seven seconds. His combination of pretty-boy looks, sensitivity and smarts realizes a character that is a sort of heavyweight Sugar Ray Leonard. He holds the whole thing together, and possesses all the qualities necessary to become a major star.
Talia Shire (Rocky Balboa’s girlfriend in the original, and possibly some or all of the sequels — I haven’t bothered checking IMDb) doesn’t appear in this one, except as a name on a headstone, having evidently died, and neither does any female character sufficiently interesting to counter-balance the macho male lineup, although Tessa Thompson as Jordan’s girlfriend/fiancée is certainly pretty, and reminiscent of Diahnne Abbott circa Taxi Driver and New York, New York.
Duke McKenzie once told me that the best movie depiction of boxing was Hurricane, which I’ve not yet gotten around to watching — even though I know the Dylan song of the same story down to the last growled lyric and draw of Scarlet Rivera’s violin bow — but Creed II makes a more decent fist of the fight sequences than any of the Rocky films I’ve seen, even if they’re still not wholly convincing. Actually I have not seen the previous Creed, but would now happily give it a whirl if it popped up on Film4 or TCM.
Below: Diahnne Abbott, “New York, New York” (1977).
FATAL VISIONS 