Review of Creed (2015) by Yorkman — 02 Dec 2015

Oh dear....

After the brilliant Rocky Balboa offered a very tidy bookend to the Rocky film franchise the world really didn't need Stallone to dust off the character for (hopefully) one last outing (although this film does leave the story open ended, which just feels like another throwback 'beat' to the original Rocky movie).

Michael B. Jordan is introduced as Apollo Creed's illegitimate son Adonis "Donnie" Creed (who was born after his father died in the ring, in order to make him just about young enough to 'be' an up and coming fighter) who decides to leave his pretty decent life behind in California and head to Philadelphia as a way to find out who he really is.

Rocky is now effectively alone, the characters introduced in Rocky Balboa who offered some emotional context have apparently disappeared, and Paulie has died in the interim too. Rocky and Donnie form a bond after Rocky, who is immediately dismissive of getting back into the training game, has a pretty impressive change of heart and begins to get Donnie into better shape.

Donnie's love interest, Bianca is shoe-horned in after they meet because she lives in the apartment below, and plays music too loudly... Cue awkwardness that blossoms into love/hate/love as the plot requires.

Donnie is offered the chance to fight the undefeated, undisputed, light-heavyweight champ because of extraneous circumstances that for some reason make an unknown 'Creed' a better money making prospect that the number one contender... (Yes, that made no sense to me either!) Culminating in a beat by beat cover version of Rocky's first fight with Apollo (and, sadly, does set up a potential sequel).

Along the way we discover a little about Donnie's motivations, Rocky's difficulties with being alone, and the parallel 'internal' fights of both men as they battle to overcome their fears (of different things, for different reasons).

All in all it's just highly derivative and a completely unnecessary film. As mentioned, the finale of Rocky Balboa was the perfect ending to what was then a 30 year franchise. Now, coming up on 40 years since we first saw Rocky climb out of the ring after beating 'Spider', lighting a cigarette, and heading home... We're left with a bad aftertaste with the final mouthful, despite some great acting on Stallone's part, because seeing this film only reminded me just how fresh and exciting the original Rocky film (that Creed desperately attempts to emulate) actually was.

Immensely disappointing.