Review of Rocky III (1982) by Lenny M — 26 Sep 2009

Sylvester Stallone stars and directs this third entry in the highly successful Rocky boxing franchise. Here he is only about 34 and just about manages to pull off the character!

In this Rocky series entry Balboa faces Mr. T's character 'Clubber Lang' a very hard, coloured Phil Mitchell type character.

This film introduces the Rocky franchise to the sounds of 80s act 'Survivor' with their only major international hit I think, 'Eye Of The Tiger.' The song makes a good backdrop to the training montages and montages of Rocky fights and magazine covers and endorsements from the 1980s, along with appearances beside then US President Reagan.

Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) makes another appearance in the franchise as a 'goody' this time and becomes Balboas new trainer after the death of Mickey (Burgess Meredith).

Mr. T is excellent as hard as nails Clubber Lang. Love some of his quotes. "What is your prediction?" asks one reporter. Lang pauses for a second looks at the camera. "...My prediction...pain!".

Hulk Hogan makes a fleating appearance as champion wrestler Thunderlips in a charity 'fight' against the world boxing champion, Rocky. He 'kills' Balboa yet Balboa draws the fight somehow and carries on with no injurues!

The fight choreography is awful. Its worse than watching WWF when you were 13 and thinking it was all real! I mean take the final fight between Clubber Lang and Rocky Balboa. Both fighters take a battering by round 2. As usual Balboa takes more physical damage than a high speed crash on the M1 yet still carries on as if hardly anything has happened.

After every jab there are awful sound effects that make them sound like major punches.

The film Rocky Balboa shows how much better the fight choreography can be.

All in all another feel good Rocky film and another waste of 2 hours when bored on a Sunday night.