Review of Rocky III (1982) by Brandon S — 05 Jun 2011

Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) is the Heavyweight champion of the world after beating Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) - in Rocky II - and is now living a happy life as every rich man. He has not been taking boxing seriously lately, he has been doing things such as exhibition matches with Wrestlers like Hulk Hogan, which, as dumb as it sounds, was pretty entertaining to watch.

A tough man challenges him, his name is Clubber (Laurence Tureaud, a.k.a. Mr. T) and he says he'll destroy Balboa. Balboa's trainer Mickey (Burgess Meredith) tells Balboa to start training seriously because Clubber is a tough fighter, and if he doesn't train he'll lose quickly. Balboa doesn't listen to Mickey, he is more concerned about his looks and having fun with the fans. While Clubber is doing strong exercises such as pull-ups, Balboa is just riding a bicycle and posting for pictures taken at the gym.

I guess it wouldn't be a spoiler to say Rocky fights more than once in this film, the first time he was completely confident he'd win, and for the second time he had to train much harder. Some drama is added to the film, and a 'new' character is brought in, well, not really brought in, as he appeared in the first two films, but Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) has more screen time off the ring than he did on the ring in the first two films combined.

The film was written and directed by Stallone himself, and I must say it wasn't the best Rocky film. The fights are good, the story is average I'd say. Nothing new here, same old stuff. If you're the kind of person who gives importance to every minor detail in films, then you wouldn't be reading any Rocky review, so, if you bothered to check this, I guess you must like this kind of flick a bit. If you've seen the first two, then you know what to expect, it's pretty much the same. Not very good acting, Stallone with that dumb way of speaking, some punches thrown by guys with lots of muscles and huge loads of vaseline on them, you know how it goes. You should watch it just for being able to say you've seen it, but don't expect too much.