Mary Anne points this out in an excellent speech where she details the more unsavory aspects of living with a boxer whose body took so much punishment that he could barely perform simple tasks like walking up stairs or cleaning himself. It’s the opposite of Rocky’s blue-collar existence, and it reminded me of a line in the boxing documentary “ Champs,” where an interview subject states that “ nobody rich ever took up boxing.” Donnie has clearly benefited from the spoils of Apollo’s legacy, yet a childhood filled with scrapes with the law and constant fisticuffs leads him to quit his successful job for one where the odds for success are far more limited. That Donnie has a white-collar job is interesting. “Creed” shows Donnie fighting in Mexico before returning to his office job in Los Angeles 12 hours later. Yet he secretly engages in his father’s sport. Though Mary Anne raises him as her own, Donnie’s resentment about being in the shadow of a famous man he never knew nor met grows as he ages. Mary Anne adopts the young man, a product of an affair Apollo had before he was killed in the ring by Drago in “Rocky IV”. “Creed” begins with Donnie’s past, where young, orphaned Adonis Johnson is visited in juvenile hall by Apollo Creed’s widow, Mary Anne (a fiercely maternal Phylicia Rashad). We’re moving forward, but the ghosts of the past are still coming with us. Additionally, Stallone’s run-down physicality as the older version of Rocky stands in striking contrast to the boxer posing behind him, frozen in time. Coogler fits his actors in the shot so that the background image serves as a flashback and a flash-forward the screen contains Rocky’s past and Apollo’s future. Their talk is framed with Stallone and Jordan standing in front of a picture of Rocky and Adonis’ late father, Apollo Creed. Coogler perfectly captures his intentions in an early conversation between Rocky and Donnie (as Adonis calls himself). There are as many quietly effective moments as there are stand-up-and-cheer moments, and they’re all handled with skill and dexterity on both sides of the camera.Ĭoogler’s direction leaves little doubt that “Creed” is writing a love letter to “Rocky” lore while also establishing an original narrative about its own creation, Adonis Creed ( Michael B. This is a crowd-pleaser that takes its time building its character-driven universe. It may be easy to predict where the film takes us, but that doesn’t reduce the power and enormity of the emotional responses it gets from the audience. Armed with these elements, “Creed” then tweaks them, playing on our expectations before occasionally surprising us.
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There is also the famous boxer who gives our hero the boxing match chance of a lifetime.
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There’s the humble boxer, his mentor and the woman who becomes his significant other and rock of support. A hero's journey deserves a hero who's mesmerizing through no fault of the talented Jordan, Adonis still stands in the shadow of Rocky Balboa.Coogler’s story, co-written with Aaron Covington, unabashedly mirrors the arc of the original “Rocky”. But Adonis also needs to be compelling away from the ropes.
#Movie reviews for kids creed movie#
He comes alive when he's in the ring, as the star of a Rocky movie should (though nostalgia buffs will wish they'd hear more of the iconic theme song), thanks to fight choreography that taps into both the balletic and brutal elements of the punishing sport. As he's written, Adonis isn't as complexly rendered as he deserves we don't get to know him as deeply as we did Rocky, and therefore we aren't as invested in him as we should be.
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We've known this character for years, and there's something fundamentally appealing about him.Īdonis, meanwhile, is much more complicated and - at least in the way Creed unfurls his story - not as accessible (this despite Jordan turning in an outstanding performance). When Stallone makes his first appearance, it's hard not to root for him. First, the good stuff: Decades after the first Rocky hit the big screen, the pull of the franchise endures.
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But it's still well worth seeing, if only to witness how Rocky's cinematic and boxing legacy continues. This movie has elements that are terrific, no question, but it disappoints, too.