Like many people of my age, I have fond memories of the Rocky movies. I wasn't expecting much of this and for the first three quarters of the movie I was proven correct. But the last 30 minutes made up for the rest.
"My" Rocky was Rocky III with the still great Eye of The Tiger. It was 1982 and I was 14 years old. I still remember being blown away in the cinema by it. It was actually years later that I saw numbers I and II. It all went to hell after that.
So when I heard he was making another one, at his age, I cringed. Of course that cringing turned out to be key to the plot. The movie is written and directed by Stallone and suffers from it. The dialogue is painfully bad all the way through and much of the plot is cookie-cutter silliness. Current champ is un-appreciated by the masses, Rocky has many ghosts of his life haunting him. Media creates buzz around who was/is the greater champion and so an "exhibition" match is arranged.
All the way up to this point I was close to turning the movie off. But then the music starts and the training begins with the brilliantly written "So, what we'll be calling on is good ol' fashion blunt force trauma. Horsepower. Heavy-duty, cast-iron, piledriving punches that will have to hurt so much they'll rattle his ancestors. Every time you hit him with a shot, it's gotta feel like he tried kissing the express train. Yeah! Let's start building some hurtin' bombs!"
I've always enjoyed the training scenes more than the fights in Rocky and this is no exception. Wow, can that man push his body. Whilst his face is a mess of poorly executed plastic surgery and bad hair dye, his body is still amazing.
The fight itself is superb and the outcome is the only one that makes sense. Sure it's a bit predictable and warm n fuzzy, but dammit, still enjoyable.
If you can ignore a script which consists of maybe 10 stock phrases used over and over then you won't mind sitting through this.
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