Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
1/4/07
The Hero wins the big fight,
gets The Girl, and the camera pulls back as we delight in the thought that
they'll live Happily Ever After. Oh, we may check back in on them
once or twice in a few sequels, maybe The Girl will even be off-screen
in a few of them, but we know everything will work out in the end.
Then, we never write, we never call, and The Hero does indeed live the
hell out of the next few decades. But surely there will come a time
when the adventures are done, The Girl passes away, and he is left with
nothing to do but to retell the tales of his victories again and again.
It is at this moment that Sylvester Stallone's extraordinary Rocky Balboa
begins.
We all remember Rocky, the
iconic rags-to-riches hero of the Oscar-winning 1976 classic and its' increasingly
dismal sequels. When we meet him again, he is in his late 50's, mourning
the death of his beloved Adrian, struggling to retain some contact with
his distant son (Heroes' Milo Ventimiglia), and probably wishing
he had less with the increasingly bitter Paulie (Burt Young, as ever).
He tells those stories at his restaurant, Adrian's, and finds himself reaching
out to Marie (Geraldine Hughes), a woman he once met as a child, and her
son Steps (James Francis Kelly III) just looking for “a couple new friends”.
He even gets a dog, and doesn't seem to mind when Steps names it Punchy.
But his slide into banal oblivion is interrupted by a surprising source:
a junkie ESPN filler show that speculates on whether Rocky in his prime
could have beaten current champ Mason Dixon (Antonio Tarver). ESPN's
computers give the fight to Rocky, and something inside him shifts.
Soon, he's petitioning the boxing commission for a chance to fight again,
and Dixon's ambitious handlers have an opponent in mind: the unpopular
champ.
Sylvester Stallone's career
has not been the one fans might have imagined for him when Rocky first
came out (I was 4, but I'm sure I too saw things working out a lot better).
Sure, he's done some entertaining action flicks, even given a few more
strong performances, but in the end, the fire and passion that had people
comparing the young actor/screenwriter to Marlon Brando back in the day
has rarely resurfaced. In Rocky Balboa, it's back. Like
his character, Stallone is now a self-described “has-been” just looking
for another chance to do what he loves, and the results are remarkable.
It's truly rare to see a movie speak with such candid passion about the
basic human desire to matter, to “stand toe to toe and say 'I am'”.
As in the original film, it doesn't really matter if Rocky wins the big
fight or not, only that he can prove he belongs in the ring with the Champion
of the World.
Even though it's been 30
years, for the first time in a sequel, Stallone really seems to BE Rocky
again, awkward, not all that smart, but loyal and courageous, and knowing
the things about life that really matter. Tarver makes an impressive
acting debut as Dixon; like Apollo Creed, he provides Rocky with an opponent
who stands for the opposite of almost everything Balboa represents, but
is still a three-dimensional character with his own lessons to learn from
their meeting. Hughes is good at matching Stallone's quiet, easygoing
pace, and Ventimiglia nails the character flaws that finally inspire his
father to give a barnburner of a speech about the need to keep taking life's
punches and getting back up. The one character I've never really
gotten in these movies is Paulie, the odd creation of Burt Young.
Here, he's stranger than ever, a collection of explosive tics in search
of a purpose.
After the entertaining Rocky
II, with its' classically melodramatic double-knockout finale, the
franchise floundered for years, and it's wonderful to finally see it back
on its' feet. Stallone has chosen a verité style that make
the whole thing seem surprisingly realistic, particularly once he's trotted
out just about every big name in boxing broadcasting for the finale (credit
to Larry Merchant and Jim Lampley for seeming so much like themselves while
announcing the climactic match, something that few real-life announcers
can do in the movies). The match itself has a good rhythm and strategy,
and while you might call the result predictable once you've seen it, I
could have imagined any outcome from a Rocky victory all the way down to
him dying in the ring (Stallone has often said in interviews that only
studio intervention stopped Rocky V from ending exactly that way).
Bill Conti also stages a nice comeback with his rousing score.
So, does the greatness of
Rocky
Balboa mean that we can now expect a Clint Eastwood-style renaissance
from the writer-director-star? Probably not. But it does
mean that for at least the second time in his career, Stallone the auteur
has had something to say, and has said it brilliantly. As Lampley
says at one point, they say that every fighter has one more great match
left in him. May no less be true of us all. |
