Review: Creed

In a year full of reinvigorated franchises, perhaps none is more surprising than Creed, the seventh installment in the nearly four decades old series and most likely the first entry in a new and separate franchise.

The first film in the series neither written nor directed by Sylvester Stallone, Creed has been placed in the hands of director Ryan Coogler, who co-wrote the screenplay with Aaron Covington. The essence of the Rocky films has always been Rocky himself, the underdog who confounded everyone's expectations by lasting the full 15 rounds. His opponent, Apollo Creed, may have retained the championship belt, but it was Rocky who was the true winner for anyone who witnessed his dogged determination. [Similarly, Rocky was the little film that could, not only raking in money at the box office but besting the likes of All the President's Men, Network and Taxi Driver to win Best Picture that year.] Creed may be about handing the baton over to the next generation, but Coogler and Covington are wise enough to recognise that this film is just as much about Rocky Balboa as it is about Adonis Johnson Creed.

When we first meet Adonis, better known as Donnie, he's in an L.A. juvenile detention center and engaged in yet another fight. Having grown up in foster care since his mom's death, he seems destined to keep bouncing from one juvie center to another before being lost to the streets or prison. Fate intervenes when Mary Anne Creed (Phylicia Rashad) appears, informs him that he's the illegitimate son of her late husband, the former heavyweight champion of the world Apollo Creed, and asks him to come live with her.

Nearly twenty years later, Donnie is ensconced in his father's mansion and working at a financial firm. It's a good life, but fighting is in his blood. His black-market bouts in Tijuana are not enough anymore and, against Mary Anne's wishes, Donnie quits his job and heads to Philadelphia to enlist Rocky's help to train him to be a real contender. The Italian Stallion, his boxing days long behind him, is initially reluctant, especially since he still feels responsible for Apollo dying in the ring. Yet he gives in - it could be Donnie's persistence, it could be a chance to be back in the ring even if only from the sidelines, it could be atonement for Apollo's death, it could be a way to pass on his own legacy as well as ensuring Apollo's.

Legacy is a running theme - Donnie refuses to be in his father's shadow. Apollo may never have known about or acknowledged his son during his lifetime, but Donnie shuns taking his father's name as his own. He wants to be known as his own man, not as Apollo's son. More revealingly, he understands the burden that name carries. "What if I take on the name and I lose?" he confides to Bianca (Tessa Thompson), his downstairs neighbour who becomes his main squeeze. Rocky knows the burden all too well; his son Robert felt the pressure of living up to his father's name. Rocky and Donnie's destinies are intertwined before they ever even meet. Both have healing to be done, and both know that healing is impossible without the other. As both men say at various points in the film, "If I fight, you fight."

Coogler and Covington stick to the playbook whilst simultaneously placing the tale firmly in the 21st century. Stallone may have ceded the writing and directing, but this is a film that is very much indebted to him in structure and style. The beats and flourishes may be familiar, but there is a reason why the original Rocky is considered one of the best sports dramas of all time and why it and its sequels have been the template for countless sports films. It's effective, almost ridiculously so. And when the chords of Bill Conti's iconic score are heard, it not only rouses but it brings a tear to the eye and a lump to the throat. Nostalgia is a significant factor in what makes Creed so emotionally satisfying, but make no mistake: Creed succeeds on its own merits.

Jordan, reuniting with his Fruitvale Station director, mixes the brash and the bashful, the rage and resentment but also the gratitude and tenderness. Thompson is more than his match and their scenes together, particularly one in which he tends to her braids, are warm, sexy, and flinty when needed. It may be strange to say but Stallone has never felt more like a star than as the weakened and wizened Rocky. Thoroughly lovable and tremendously affecting, Stallone is the undisputed heart and soul of this film.

Creed

Directed by: Ryan Coogler

Written by: Ryan Coogler, Aaron Covington

Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad, Wood Harris, Tony Bellew, Graham McTavish, Ritchie Coster