{"id":4160,"date":"2015-11-27T08:46:58","date_gmt":"2015-11-27T15:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=4160"},"modified":"2015-11-27T08:53:16","modified_gmt":"2015-11-27T15:53:16","slug":"review-creed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=4160","title":{"rendered":"Review: CREED"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a>\"fixbutton\"<\/a>\u201cBut you can\u2019t buy what I\u2019m gonna give you.\u00a0 I mean I\u2019ve got pain and I\u2019ve got experience.\u201d\u00a0 Mickey pleads with Rocky, who\u2019s mulling over an opportunity to fight the champ Apollo Creed.\u00a0 Back in 1976, this was the uncertain start of a cinematic boxing partnership, one that has lasted almost 40 years.<\/p>\n

If we\u2019re lucky, our childhood heroes get older and grow with us.\u00a0 And like it or not, some fictional heroes over time take on a real life of their own.\u00a0 In the case of Rocky, I think of the character as an almost mythic athlete and less the fictional creation of Sylvester Stallone and Hollywood.\u00a0 The Rocky phenomenon has largely replaced the old David and Goliath story for millions, and Rocky came to embody the heart of the underdog.<\/p>\n

But as the character was recycled\u2014 mainly for financial gain \u2014 the myth was tarnished. In the last installment in the franchise, the character was reduced in many ways to a video game, even a joke.\u00a0 Sure, I liked that fantasy in which Rocky came out of retirement to fight Mason \u201cThe Line\u201d Dixon, played by real life fighter Antonio Tarver.\u00a0 But it was the character of Rocky as played by the chiseled Stallone that endured even at his cheesiest.\u00a0 And that character is well worth revisiting.<\/p>\n

In \u201cCreed,\u201d the seventh film in the series, we meet Rocky Balboa again.\u00a0 The days in the ring are long behind him.\u00a0 His wife has passed away, his son has moved out of Philly to make it on his own away from the spotlight that Rocky\u2019s fame created.\u00a0 Even Paulie is no longer around to taunt the brutish brawler once known affectionately as the Italian Stallion.\u00a0 And Rocky is at peace with his life, running a small restaurant named after his late wife. He\u2019s content, but in his eyes, we see it, something missing, something left to be proven.<\/p>\n

One day, a young man walks into Rocky\u2019s restaurant.\u00a0 He\u2019s lean and well-groomed. His accent hangs \u201cI\u2019m from out of town\u201d around his neck.\u00a0 This young man is Adonis (Michael B. Jordan), a wannabe fighter who left a comfortable job in sunny LA in search of himself in the blood soaked meat grinder of the ring.\u00a0 We know he\u2019s Apollo Creed\u2019s son even before Rocky does, but when Adonis asks Rocky to train him, the flicker in Rocky\u2019s eyes is there.\u00a0 Another chance presents itself to play the underdog, this time from the corner where Mickey once stood in for Rocky.\u00a0 The training style will be different, more humble, less threatening, but like Rocky\u2019s pint sized mentor \u2014 caring and meaningful.<\/p>\n

\u201cCreed\u201d is a film of pure theatrical joy.\u00a0 Sure, it is a cinematic creation in which time is compressed to a series of action packed montages and somewhat forced characterizations manifesting into moments of talk filled obvious speech-making.\u00a0 But by taking all the good will that was originally generated when \u201cRocky\u201d won the Oscar for best picture and combining that with what little credibility remains in the character, co-writer\/director Ryan Coogler (\u201cFruitvale Station\u201d) packages together a tender, exciting and respectful film.\u00a0 \u201cCreed\u201d manages to be better than it ought to be.\u00a0 It transcends mere franchise and genre conventions becoming an artful project that aims to be its own film apart from those that came before it.\u00a0 I\u2019m not overestimating the achievement here, \u201cCreed\u201d is a seriously good film even if Rocky had never been made.<\/p>\n

And this is the magic \u2014with \u201cCreed\u201d the character is honored with a thrilling human story and dramatic arch worthy of its origin and overcoming the hackneyed missteps that are now routinely lampooned.\u00a0 Perfect?\u00a0 Not by a long shot.\u00a0 But perfectly pitched to capture the zeitgeist that came to be a pop culture phenomenon? You betcha.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, eh \u2026, I eh \u2026, I don\u2019t \u2026, I eh \u2026, I\u2019m 76 years old,\u201d a broken and humbled Micky puts his head on the door to Rocky\u2019s bathroom in his small apartment.\u00a0 He hears the toilet flush.<\/p>\n

Stallone, who will likely find himself nominated for best supporting actor for his fine work in \u201cCreed,\u201d is now approaching 70 himself.\u00a0 And he knows Rocky, the guy who chased Mickey out into the street to hug him and form that forever ringside partnership.\u00a0 It is that tenderness that Stallone makes us remember and that tender sincerity that makes \u201cCreed\u201d an undeniable winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…a Transcendent Piece of Cinema.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4160"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4165,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4160\/revisions\/4165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}