Rocky Balboa (Theatrical Release)

Release Date: 12/20/06
Starring Sylvester Stallone, Burt Young, Antonio Tarver, Geraldine Hughes, Milo Ventimiglia
Written and Directed By Sylvester Stallone
Rated PG
My Rating: 8/10

A quick general note before I start: I haven't updated this site since the summer. Partly because I moved and began working a new job, partly because my new job has been time consuming, and partly due to nothing more than adject laziness.

Now, due to a temporary layoff from said job, I have NOTHING but time for the next month or so, so expect an excess of updates in the next few weeks. However, I hope to not completely dismiss it, even when I do get back to work, since writing/discourse about movies is still one of my absolute favorite things.

So yeah, if anyone reads this, keep reading. And tell your friends. Onward and upward...

To my most anticipated movie of the entire year of 2006. If you're looking for a 100% objective review of the 6th installment of the "Rocky" series, you should probably go ahead and look elsewhere. Anyone who knows me even casually knows they are some of my absolute favorite movies. I even enjoy the subpar later installments. I can admit that "Rocky 3" and "Rocky 5" are both, from a scriptwriting and filmmaking standpoint, fairly subpar movies, but I love them anyway. I guess it's just a weakness I have. To put my interest in the series into perspective, I have, to date, seen "Rocky Balboa" three times.

Regardless of all of this, however, I feel the movie should please casual fans and perhaps even non-followers of the Italian Stallion. It's a well made, strictly from the heart crowdpleaser, that may cross the line into overwrought at times, but still manages to get it's message across.

This time around, we find our hero without his beloved wife Adrian who passed away from cancer several years prior. He spends his days whittling away his time in a Philadelphia rowhome and managing an Italian restaurant where he spends his evenings endlessly rehashing old fight stories. His son (now played by Milo Ventimiglia) is all grown up and well meaning, if a bit stuffy. His brother in law and sidekick Paulie (Burt Young) is still as cantankerous as ever. Two events put Rocky's stagnant life in motion in an entirely different direction. First he reconnects with a young girl named Marie (now all grown up and played by Geraldine Hughes) who he had a brief encounter with thirty years ago in the first film. Then Rocky sees a computer simulation saying that in his prime, he could have beaten the current heavyweight champion, the improbably named Mason "The Line" Dixon (real life light heavyweight boxer Antonio Tarver).

Any veteran of these movies, or I suppose anyone who's seen the trailer can imagine the general direction the movie takes from here. One of the most striking things about it however, is the allegory to his own life Stallone has managed to inject into the movie. Rocky speaks of having a "beast" inside of him that he needs to vanquish by stepping into the ring for one last fight. It seems as if Stallone felt that very same demon in real life in regards to this movie, perhaps partly due to the last installment being the absurdly subpar and almost universally hated "Rocky 5".

The heartfelt nature of the movie does a lot to help overcome some of it's minor problem, most of which involve the pacing of the script (it jumps in places where it probably could have lingered a little more) and scenes that are meant to be dramatic that occasionally devolve into schmaltz territory.

Any shortcomings of the first sections of the movie should be forgotten by the time the inevitable fight between Rocky and Dixon begins. It is by far the most visceral, stylized fight in the entire series of movies. Having a real life boxer play Rocky's opponent probably helped too. This looks way more like an actual boxing match and less like a street fight than any of Rocky's previous onscreen battles. The fight features some cinematography flourishes that some might find distracting. Personally I found it interesting and thought there was a nice intense mood set for the entirety of the fight sequence.

The whole thing really makes for a very appropriate sendoff for the little Italian underdog from Philly. Hopefully Stallone has purged "the beast" and will now leave Rocky to my fond remembrances.