Creed (2015) [Blu-ray]
Drama | Sport

The former World Heavyweight Champion Rocky Balboa serves as a trainer and mentor to Adonis Johnson, the son of his late friend and former rival Apollo Creed.

Storyline: Adonis Johnson is the son of the famous boxing champion Apollo Creed, who died in a boxing match in Rocky IV (1985). Adonis wasn't born until after his father's death and wants to follow his fathers footsteps in boxing. He seeks a mentor who is the former heavyweight boxing champion and former friend of Apollo Creed, the retired Rocky Balboa. Rocky eventually agrees to mentor Adonis. With Rocky's help they hope to get a title job to face even deadlier opponents than his father. But whether he is a true fighter remains to be seen.... Written by Blake ordonez

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Michael Reuben, February 29, 2016 -- Ryan Coogler wasn't even born when Sylvester Stallone first brought Rocky Balboa to the screen, but in Coogler's remarkable Creed, the sophomore writer/director and the aging superstar lock arms across four decades to remind audiences why Rocky has been a cherished icon since he first sprinted up the stone steps to Philadelphia's Museum of Art. At the time, Rocky wanted nothing more than to prove he wasn't "just another bum from the neighborhood" by surviving twelve rounds in an exhibition boxing match with the world heavyweight champion. Having accomplished the goal, the underdog boxer kept proving his worth to himself and the world, but in Creed he faces a different challenge: that of passing the torch to a younger man in whom Rocky recognizes the same urgent desire to become a champion. That the young man happens to be the son of Rocky's former rival and friend, Apollo Creed, only adds to the sense of destiny knocking.

Creed is pervaded by ghosts, and the spirit of Apollo Creed, who died in the ring in Rocky IV, is only the most obvious. The ghosts of Rocky's own past surround him, whether in pictures on the wall at Adrian's Restaurant, in posters of his former self at Mighty Mick's Boxing gym, or even the bronze statue at the top of the Rocky Steps, where tourists pose for photographs. Coogler floods the frame with such images, letting them work both as inspiration to the characters and as a reminder to the audience of the striving spirit that Rocky has represented for generations of viewers. Even as the erstwhile Italian Stallion battles age and ill health, his own past keeps calling him back into the fray. Resigned to having been beaten by time (the only contender, as he says, that is "undefeated"), the old man finds that his skills are still needed, but now in a different capacity, as a coach and father figure to the young fighter in whom he can see both himself and the opponent who first prodded the young Rocky to exceed his circumstances.

Creed not only continues the Rocky franchise; it reinvents it with an emotional ferocity not seen since the original film. A spiffily modern digital production that proudly wears its 21st Century provenance, Creed also embraces its pop culture inheritance, like boxers who insist on training "old school". Just as its brash young hero battles to prove himself worthy of his father's name, Coogler's film strives to be worthy of its cinematic forbears—and soars on the effort.

Creed finds Rocky Balboa (Stallone) literally sitting in a graveyard waiting to die, while he converses with the spirits of wife Adrian and brother-in-law Paulie. Though he remains a familiar and beloved figure in his native town, Rocky is a man alone and, at least on the surface, at peace with fading quietly from the scene. All of that changes with the arrival of Adonis "Donnie" Johnson (Michael B. Jordan), a scrapping product of foster care and juvenile homes, who learned when he was twelve that he is the illegitimate son of former heavyweight champion Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers, in photos and flashbacks). Born after Creed's death, the boy (played by Alex Henderson) lost his mother at an early age, but Creed's widow, Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad), tracked him down, adopted and raised him. (Rashad, with limited screen time and minimal dialogue, manages the extraordinary feat of conveying the entire emotional obstacle course that Mary Anne's generosity required her to travel.) Having been raised by Mary Anne to aspire to a better life, the young Adonis becomes obsessed with his father's career and legacy and, rejecting a cushy desk job, he leaves Los Angeles to pursue a boxing career. Seeking connection with the father he never knew, Adonis asks Rocky to train him.

Coogler's film closely tracks Stallone's original script for Rocky by maneuvering Adonis into an exhibition match (on HBO) against world lightweight champion "Pretty" Ricky Conlan (Tony Bellew), a bruiser from Liverpool, whose legal troubles are threatening his career and whose manager (Graham McTavish) sees a match against the son of Apollo Creed as a golden opportunity. But the true drama of Creed isn't the fight with Conlan. It's the effort by Adonis and Rocky to reach out to each other across the years that separate them, each alone in his own world, to form an unlikely family (the word occurs frequently in Creed). The barriers are formidable, but the need is intense, and the push/pull between the young fighter and his reluctant mentor challenges both of them in ways that neither could have anticipated. The violence of the ring is nothing compared to the emotional furor when these two clash.

Just like the young Rocky, Adonis has his Adrian, in the person of Bianca (Tessa Thompson), a singer who is as ambitious in her own pursuits as Adonis in his. It wasn't until Rocky III that Talia Shire's Adrian showed the steel at her core, but Thompson gives Bianca a tough worldliness that both challenges and supports Adonis. (She's the one who ultimately persuades him to adopt his father's name.)

Stallone gives the performance of his career, his every line and gesture conveying both the wisdom and the weariness of a man whom life has taken on a long and arduous path. Routinely questioning whether he has it in him to fight another battle, or even to train someone else for it, Stallone's Rocky becomes the embodiment of the very endurance he is trying to teach Adonis, which is simply the determination to keep moving forward, "one step at a time, one punch at a time, one round at a time". In a much replayed scene, Rocky points to the young fighter's reflection in a mirror and tells him: "That's the toughest opponent you're ever going to have to face." By the time Adonis enters the ring in Liverpool, Rocky has had to relearn that lesson himself, and it's what allows him, by the film's end, to stand side by side with the surrogate son who reawakened his fighting spirit, again at the top of the steps and no longer in the graveyard.

A sequel to Creed has already been announced, and it's not hard to imagine possibilities for continuing Adonis' story, but a subsequent chapter will be hard-pressed to replicate Creed's intensity. Both Rocky and his creator had to be convinced by younger men they had inspired that they still had work to do. The thrill of those twin discoveries blazes through the screen, fired even more by the younger men's joy at connecting with their pasts. Highest recommendation.

[CSW] -3.4- Creed, like each of its six predecessors, is ostensibly a boxing film, and quite a good one. There are two featured fights: the first is intense and natural, punctuated by an artfully effective long take; the second is pure edge-of-your-seat action that, as clichéd as it sounds, really pumps you up. Thankfully, however, relative-newcomer Coogler recognizes what makes these movies great: not the boxing or even the plot, but the people. Creed is by no means super-original, but its big-hearted script and punchy performances soar it towards the top of the Balboa heap. Part continuation, part spin-off of the Italian Stallion saga, we meet Adonis, the son of Rocky's one-time opponent / friend Apollo Creed, as he makes waves in the boxing community under the training of Balboa. Jordan, playing Creed, continues his assent to stardom, showing his hard-work and commitment in every frame. However, he still pales next to the Rocky character, one of the most lovable in all Hollywood cinema. Stallone wears Balboa like a wonderfully tailored old suit, playing the ever-deteriorating champ who, once the icon of running up flights of stairs, now struggles to get up a slight hill. Natural, funny, and ever-affable, Stallone puts himself deep in Oscar conversation, beautifully underlining his character's optimistic exterior with soulful heartbreak from years of loss. This unrelenting passing of time is highlighted in an early line of the film: "Time beat him. Time beats everybody; it's undefeated." But while this pessimistic realism may be the message, it is by no means the attitude; Creed is still very much a "Rocky" film at its core: unabashedly earnest and crowd-pleasing.
[V4.5-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - D-Box 10/10.


º º