Round and round we go
Slugfest sequel sticks to formula but is much more than a lightweight
When it comes to boxing movies, it’s tough to break from convention. There’s the rags-to-riches origin story, forgiving one’s family for whatever traumatic past, acquiring a relentlessly supportive wife, losing in the ring, finding a path toward redemption and, of course, ultimately winning. Done poorly, you end up with something derivative like Southpaw or Bleed for This. Done well, and you end up with something as commercially successful and critically adored as Creed. After sticking close to the boxing movie rules in the first film, the sequel picks up with Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) several years after the first film. He’s the light-heavyweight champion of the world, is engaged to a very pregnant Bianca (Tessa Thompson), is on great terms with his mother and continues to work with Rocky (Sylvester Stallone), who is recovering from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. For all intents and purposes, he’s living in bliss. Briefly, anyway. Enter Ivan Drago (a greying, but still imposing Dolph Lundgren), the very man who killed Apollo in the ring decades before, whose death Rocky memorably
avenged. The Russian brings in tow his brutish mountain of a son, Viktor, whom he hopes can challenge Adonis and reclaim their family name and respect because, as it turns out, when Ivan lost all those years ago, he didn’t just lose a title, but the love of his country (and Brigitte Nielsen). Poor guy.
Even without Rocky’s support, Adonis stubbornly accepts the fight, bent on payback. With the return of Drago comes the true-to-franchise balance of pride and vulnerability forever at play — not only for Adonis and Rocky, but for their Russian rivals. Creed 2 has a familiar connection to Rocky IV, particularly by probing what it means to be a father, build a family and always have someone in your corner. The melodrama of these themes is at its best between Adonis and Bianca, whose personal narrative feels a little more stunted in this outing than in the first. In the sequel, Bianca the singer has been set aside for Bianca the mother. Still, we get moving shots calling back to the first film, as when the two lie side by side the way they did when they first met, this time flanked by a child, or when they talk from opposite sides of a doorway — last time about breaking up, this time about marriage. Thompson herself feels like an endearing throwback to Talia Shire’s Adrian. Theirs is a sizzling, sweet chemistry, necessary in a story as testosterone-heavy as this one. At just over two hours, it takes its time to get Adonis where we know he needs to be. Still, the film rests comfortably on the burly shoulders of Jordan, who, in just three years’ time, has grown from a ripe to seasoned performer, making a meal of both a Mad Max-esque heartpounding desert workout scene and a heart-wrenching knockout, in which he’s the one who takes one too many punches. Stallone, meanwhile, in much the way Rocky has, accepts the back seat gamely as a wizened Yoda, pumping an unexpected layer of sensitivity into the film’s iron backbone, pork-pie hat and all. Sure, it’s impossible to have a film like this that isn’t weighed down by some sort of formula (or by the Rocky movies that precede it). Nonetheless, it is, as Rocky warns Adonis about his Russian opponent, “stronger, bigger, faster.” Still, it would be nice to see Adonis build his own legacy, especially if Creed is to become a franchise of its own, and not just a corollary to the six-instalment franchise that came before it.