Michael B. Jordan shows he has the eye of the tiger in this Rocky spin-off.
By Josh Lasser
It all seems vaguely improbable, but maybe only as improbable as a small-time boxer being given a shot at the title. Somehow, almost 40 years after the first film, Sylvester Stallone is back as the Italian Stallion, Rocky Balboa. Even more improbable is that the newest installment in the Rocky franchise, Creed, is really quite good.
Opening in 1998, Creed introduces us to a young Adonis Johnson. Adonis has bounced around from foster home to juvenile detention never having known his father and with his mother having passed away. In one facility he is tracked down by Mary Anne Creed (Phylicia Rashad), Apollo Creed’s widow, who takes him home and raises him as her own. Johnson isn’t her son, his mother had an affair with Apollo Creed, but that seems not to matter to her.
The film cuts to the present day and a grown up Adonis (Michael B. Jordan) wanting to be a fighter and realizing that he wants his father’s old enemy turned best friend, Rocky Balboa, to train him. Hesitant at first, Rocky agrees.
We want to hear it.
The scenes between Rocky and Adonis are one of the highlights of the movie. Watching the two men size each other up, figuring out what the other is made of could not be more enjoyable. Along the way, Adonis finds love with a singer, Bianca (Tessa Thompson), and she too becomes a part of Rocky’s life and struggles (yes, Rocky has problems all his own despite this movie being about Adonis).
Perhaps the Ryan Coogler film is best understood in the same light as its main character, Adonis Johnson, himself. Creed could easily be called Rocky VII: Creed, but the movie, like Johnson, is reluctant to take the name. Like Johnson, it wants to earn its right to be here, to be a boxing film about more than just boxing, it doesn’t want to simply trade on its lineage.
Also like Adonis, in the end, the movie does just that – it trades on that lineage. What’s more, Creed proves worthy.
In order to get his shot at the title against “Pretty” Ricky Conlan (Anthony Bellew), Adonis has to take the name Creed – there’s no money in the fight if it isn’t a Creed fight and so Conlan’s manager, Tommy Holiday (Graham McTavish), insists on Adonis taking the name. After thinking about it, Adonis agrees to do that which he hasn’t done to this point, to fight as Creed.
We want to hear it.
As a film, despite not having the name, Creed entirely trades on its parentage. It is full of clips of past Rocky movies, it is full of discussions about those movies and the dangers of boxing. It is full of music from the old movies, it has training montages, and it has the same underdog-tries-to-make-the-most-of-his-shot enthusiasm.
Of course, there’s a reason why there have been six previous installments in the Rocky franchise – it’s a tried and true formula. Everyone loves a sports story where they get to root for the underdog; and it doesn’t hurt if the action in the ring is great as well.
In the end, like any Rocky movie, Creed has to deliver great boxing, and it does that in spades. Adonis’ first fight with Rocky as his trainer is filmed in what is made to seem like a single shot, the camera dancing around the ring almost as a third opponent. It is incredible to watch unfold. The second fight, the climax of the film, isn’t quite as wonderfully orchestrated, but it still manages to get those in the theater cheering for Adonis to flatten Conlan.
We want to hear it.
While no one would blame Stallone for not wanting to appear in this Rocky movie that’s not all that much about Rocky, Stallone gives it his all. This isn’t the same young boxer who was in the first movie, but he does seem like the absolutely logical progression of the character we have seen through the years; he’s the same sort of lovable lug now that he was then.
As for Jordan, he’s outstanding. The movie does try a little too hard to tell us just how much Adonis is like Apollo – he doesn’t have to be all that much like a man he never met – but he’s more than believable as a young man struggling to figure out who he is and where he belongs. Jordan is charismatic and memorable, and makes Adonis a fully-realized character.
Anyone who goes to Creed looking for the movie to deliver something new and different from what they have seen before is going to be sorely disappointed. Creed is a mirror of Rocky’s story and we have all been watching that unfold on the big screen for decades. Coogler’s film does nothing to break the mold. Rather, it shows that the mold exists for a reason. Jordan delivers a knockout performance, and Stallone does as well. In the end, we can all only hope that we’ll get to see Adonis on screen for just as long as we’ve seen Rocky.
