Rocky’s back for round seven — and he’s packing a real punch
THE Rocky franchise long ago seemed to be on the ropes, but here, fully 40 years after the original, comes the seventh film in the series, and I’m pleased to report that it packs a genuine dramatic punch. Right, that’s the obligatory boxing metaphors dealt with. Now to the story.
When Adonis Johnson (the excellent Michael B. Jordan) finds that the father he never knew was world heavyweight champ Apollo Creed, he resolves, despite a privileged, educated upbringing (a neat subversion of most boxing narratives), to follow in the old man’s footsteps. So he goes to Philadelphia to persuade Creed’s friend, and adversary in the ring, Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), to train him.
The Great Mumbler is on terrific, charismatic form, which has earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and this is a much better boxing film than last year’s Southpaw, which had a huge amount of sweat, most of it shed by Jake Gyllenhaal, but somehow lacked heart.
There’s oodles of heart here, and commensurate amounts of corn. But writer-director Ryan Coogler, whose only previous feature was the stirring 2013 drama Fruitvale Station, which also starred Jordan, does a splendid job of making his film at least as rousing as it is corny.
It doesn’t matter that Adonis gets a highly improbable shot at the world title after fighting for about five minutes, or that the ageing Rocky has a poignant battle of his own to wage.
In fact, that’s all part of the fun, which for British audiences is ramped up when Adonis gets his climactic title shot at Goodison Park in Liverpool, the home of Everton FC, against the notoriously hard ‘Pretty’ Ricky Conlan (admirably played by top light-heavyweight Tony Bellew), flamboyantly sporting the Everton crest.
I had only two problems with this film. One is that the 12A certificate looks decidedly liberal in the light of some graphically brutal fight scenes; it should have been a 15.
The other is that, as a lifelong Everton fan myself, I was rooting for the wrong guy.