★★★☆☆
I found Creed a bit of a disappointment. Admittedly it is difficult to reboot a franchise built around a single character, but, I expected a bit more. I’m guessing the studio felt a bit iffy about this movie as well since they didn’t actually kill off Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone). Yes, they gave him a fight with a deadly disease, but they didn’t kill the character off. If they were certain this franchise would have legs under the new story line the movie would have had that level of commitment.
The Plot
The elevator pitch for this movie was great. Rocky trains Apollo Creed’s son. Not a son born to his wife, but the result of a fling decades ago. There was even a nice spin with Apollo’s wife adopting the kid from foster care giving him a good education which had him going to make partner at a big firm.
Creed is a boxing movie that turns upside down one of the big beliefs about the sport. Boxing is what you do when you have no other options. Personally I do not know if that story is true, but it does seem logical. Why would anyone put their body through that level of punishment, not to mention getting their skull pounded, if they could make more money doing something else. This movie created such a character for us. I have only heard of such a story once in real life, but I don’t follow the sport of boxing. There was a young boxer from Illinois who postponed college to box professionally. I only know this because there was a big news clip of an interview with him after he had just won some big match.
Perhaps it was this change to the story line which hurt the movie for me. Rocky fit the model many believe about boxing. Kid with nothing works hard, takes a beating and somehow rises to the top against incredible odds. This is a kid who had everything but developed some desire to make his dead father proud so he takes the name and jumps into the sport.
The story line just didn’t work for me.
For more movie rental ideas please see list one and list two.
