MOVIE REVIEW
In Creed, Rocky's Back, As a
Mentor, Not a Fighter
A
t a recent screening of Creed, as the familiar fanfare of Bill Conti's beloved Rocky score signaled
the start of the final round of the big fight, the audience burst into spontaneous applause. This was no
sneak-preview crowd, primed with free admission and
popcorn, but a room full of critics and journalists armored in professional skepticism. A cynic might say that
the cheering was a Pavlovian reflex set off by a piece
of commercial entertainment in the hands of a skilled,
manipulative director. This cynic, however, was too busy
choking up and clapping to form the thought.In 2015,
whether by coincidence or by the mysterious movements
of the dialectic, a bunch of semi-dormant franchises
have come roaring back to pop-cultural life, enrolling legions of new fans and managing both to transcend and
to exploit the nostalgia of Gen-X old-timers. There was
Mad Max: Fury Road and then Jurassic World. The next
Star Wars arrives in a few weeks. In the meantime we
have Creed, which writes another chapter in the saga of
Rocky Balboa and which is something that Italian Stallion's devotees have not seen in a long time, perhaps
since the original Rocky way back in 1976: a terrific boxing movie.And a great deal more besides. The six Rocky
movies before Creed, to put it kindly, have had their ups
and downs. From humble beginnings (and an improbable best picture Oscar, beating out All the President's
Men, Network and Taxi Driver), the series rose in the
1980s to heights of grandiosity and preposterousness
before stumbling into irrelevance. But don't call Creed a
comeback. After the folly of "Rocky Balboa," the former
champ is out of the ring for good. He's taken up the role,
essential to the genre, of the gruff, grizzled trainer. And
Sylvester Stallone, while happy to steal a scene every
now and then, cedes the limelight to Michael B Jordan.
Jordan plays a talented light-heavyweight whose rapid
ascent in the sport is fueled by an identity crisis. Even
his name is in question. The love child of Apollo Creed,
Rocky's erstwhile nemesis and eventual best friend, the
young man is unsure whether to embrace or spurn the
legacy of a father he never knew. He calls himself Adonis
(or sometimes Donnie) Johnson, and his background is a
complicated tangle of deprivation and privilege. He grew
up in foster homes and juvenile detention centers before
being adopted by Apollo's widow, Mary Anne (Phylicia
Rashad), who raised him in Los Angeles opulence and
kept him away from the boxing ring.But of course you
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