Movie Review: Creed

Its hard to believe that Rocky 6, which had the title "Rocky Balboa" is now almost 9 years old.  In that movie, Rocky's Adrian had died and in this movie, there is no more Paulee.  I find it depressing that Stallone has decided to kill off all the great characters that made Rocky such a great movie when it came out in 1976, almost 40 years ago and won best picture.  The reason for Adrian dying in the last movie was supposedly because no one would believe that she would stand by and watch her 60 year old husband fight again.The reason for Paulee leaving us was because of cancer which is a later subject of this movie as well. When Rocky Balboa came out, most critics were very surprised that it was such a good movie mainly because Rocky 4 and 5 were mostly bad movies, Rocky 5 generally agreed to be a very bad movie.  The quality of the writing, story and acting in this movie is similar to Rocky Balboa and I was happy to see that the quality of these Rocky movies has been maintained. The movie "Creed" follows the same formula of Rocky Balboa of showing real boxing footage using HBO films and commentators and having writing and a believable story line that is a quality as high as the original Rocky.  The movie Creed, which is the 7th installment in the Rocky series is the first in the franchise that was not written by Stallone himself as the decision was made for this latest installment, to inject some younger blood into to the dialog and story line. The actor Michael B. Jordan does an excellent job as the star of this movie and you have to admire the shape he got in for the work out and intense fighting movies in this movie.  He is a very good actor, which marks probably the first time in the Rocky franchise that an actor of his caliber has been in a Rocky movie. The fight scenes as well as the scenes of him working out and catching chickens, which is a reference to the second Rocky movie, were very well done and very convincing. There was also no doubt in some of the fight sequences that some of the actors including Jordan took some very big shots to the head and the body as the fight scenes were extremely well done and convincing.

This movie also has a very well done love interest for Adonis Creed, the illegitimate son of Apollo Creed. His girlfriend is a lounge singer Adonis meets in his apartment in Philadelphia. I thought it was rather unusual that the movie did not explain the complete story of Apollo's lost son until about 70% into the movie, but overall this story-line worked and so did this movie.

Stallone is definitely showing his almost 70 years in this movie as he looks every bit of 70 years and perhaps a bit older.  His performance in this movie is equally as good as it was in Rocky Balboa.  At the end of this movie the door is left wide open for a Creed 2, but given the quality of this latest Rocky movie I look forward to another movie about the life of Rocky Balboa.

I highly recommend this movie.





IMDB Creed