Movie Reviews - new films reviewed

(Rocky Fanfare - play before reading!) Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) has retired from boxing, mourns for his wife Adrian who died of cancer, and runs a restaurant in his old neighborhood in Philadelphia where he entertains the patrons with the old stories of his fights. But something is nagging at him, and he wants to return to the ring and do some small fights in the hope to exorcise his demons. In a TV show, a computer-simulated fight between Rocky in his prime and current unbeat heavyweight champion Mason “The Line” Dixon (Antonio Tarver) ends with Rocky winning. Dixon, who is not very popular in the boxing community, is annoyed, and his promoters set up a show-fight between Mason Dixon and the aging Rocky Balboa.
Assisted by Paulie (Burt Young), his son Rocky jr. (Milo Ventimiglia) and Tony “Duke” Evers (Tony Burton), Rocky prepares for his last great fight in the traditional Rocky-style …

Rocky Balboa (about life): Rocky Balboa: It will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me or nobody is going to hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit, it is about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much can you take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!

With ROCKY BALBOA, Sylvester Stallone goes back to basics and to the character of the original, Oscar-winning ROCKY film.
Forget the flag-waving cold war of ROCKY IV and the dullness of ROCKY V, but you should see at least ROCKY before you see ROCKY BALBOA!
Before the training and the (only) fight, we see an aging, mourning, lonely man who seems beaten by life and lives in the past, still not the brightest (Marie: His father was from Jamaica. Rocky Balboa: Jamaica… European… Was you on a cruise ship or somthin’?), but still a kind-hearted and straightforward guy. And there is still the fighter in him who wants to be released just one more time. Rocky’s and the audience’s old friends are still around (Burt Young, Tony Burton, Pedro Lovell as Spider Rico), only Adrian (Talia Shire) is missing. It was probably a good decision to let Adrian die - we miss her just as Rocky himself does, but we are spared any redundant “Don’t do it”/”I have to do it”-scenes between Adrian and Rocky. Instead Sylvester Stallone can concentrate on the story of Rocky (which is also the story of Sylvester Stallone himself) - the comeback of a seemingly beaten man. There are some scenes with Rocky’s son, who has a hard time living in the big shadow of the champion, but this is only a marginal plot-strand, which is appropriate.
The training sequence is relatively short but complete with pumping industrial iron, jogging through the winterly streets of Philadelphia - and of course the punching of carcasses and the running up the stairs of the Philadephia Art Museum.
And then comes the only fight in ROCKY BALBOA - Rocky’s last fight. Probably the most realistic fight scenes of the Rocky franchise, complete with flashbacks, color-draining, red, red blood. Rocky taking his usual beating before he strikes back and lets the champion waver. By holding true to his own words (it ain’t about how hard you hit, it is about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward) he earns back the respect of the audience, his friends and his family - and his self-respect. When the fight is over and he is still standing, he leaves the ring before the result is announced - he has proven to himself that he can still stand up again, no matter how hard he’s been beaten down.
ROCKY BALBOA is a worthy final chapter of a saga of 3 decades. Nostalgia playing a part in this review? Heck, yes! And now it’s time to watch the “Eye Of The Tiger”-Video!

Video: Rocky 3 - Eye Of The Tiger

Rocky Anthology (Rocky / Rocky II / Rocky III / Rocky IV / Rocky V)

Rocky Balboa Trailer

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 11th, 2007 at 12:24 pm and is filed under 4-star-movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.