Evan D. As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Anora. Rocky is the forty-ninth film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here.
Rocky Balboa (Stallone) is boxer at the end of his professional rope. To even categorize the southpaw as a real fighter is a stretch considering he makes most of his money serving as the muscle for a local mafioso. Rocky isn’t all that great in that capacity either due to a gentle nature an a propensity for cutting indebted folks some slack. Mostly, he spends his time flirting with his buddy’s sister, Adrian (Talia Shire) in between wailing on other listless amateur boxers around Philadelphia. Kicked out of his gym by the local trainer Mickey (Burgess Meredith) and nearing a low point, a sudden turn of fate offers Rocky the chance he never had. Heavyweight champion of the world Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) has a fight set for the American bicentennial in Philadelphia and suddenly finds himself in need of a challenger after his opponent drops out with an injury. With no professional contender to fill in on such short notice, Creed grants the opportunity to a local amateur. Chosen solely on his nickname “The Italian Stallion,” Rocky Balboa now has five weeks to prepare for the fight of his life. Stallone famously wrote the script for Rocky in just three days and the tale of the film’s journey to screen is an underdog story that rivals its titular character’s. Desperately seeking to break through as an actor, Stallone rebuffed wide interest in the project until a producer agreed to let him star. With a minuscule budget and a mostly unknown star, Rocky might just have been the most unlikely Best Picture winner to that point. Much like Balboa’s unconventional training methods, the quirks of production in Rocky lift it up higher than it may otherwise have gotten. Stallone, having written the lead part for himself, understands his character at a core level. He plays The Italian Stallion with a wounded vulnerability that contrasts with Weathers’s bravado. Importantly, Creed’s vanity is never outright villainous and Rocky’s underdog journey is not confused for some sort of noble quest. Bending the archetypes of these characters make them feel more like real people with ambitions and insecurities that don’t squarely fit in the ropes of a boxing ring. More than David taking on Goliath, Rocky is a story about scraping, clawing and getting more out of yourself than you thought you could. It’s a romance as much as a sports film, refusing to distill Rocky down to just a fighter. Certainly there is a suspension of disbelief that comes along with any story this sentimental. At times Stallone’s script can feel a bit corny. It also suffers in comparison to more modern boxing films — like its spin-off Creed (2015) — for the advances in translating the brutal sport to screen. Some tighter editing and effects would have made the fight scenes feel more intense and genuine. Still, the faults are relatively minor compared to the incredible highs that Rocky hits. Bill Conti’s iconic score swells as Rocky runs up the steps of Philadelphia Museum of Art and its hard not to get swept up with it. Ant that ending. It endures because Avildsen and Stallone were able to build out a story that would succeed whether its protagonist did or not. They managed to reframe the climactic fight from one for a belt or title, to one for dignity and personal growth. The result is a winning film that sets the template for a whole genre that followed. 8/10
Comments
|