? Sylvester Stallone’s unabashedly nostalgic sequel finds the boxer mourning his late wife and running a South Philly restaurant named after her. But the lure of the ring beckons in the form of surly heavyweight champion Mason “The Line” Dixon, in need of an image boost.
+ For better or
worse, this is Stallone’s attempt to re-create the feeling of the first film,
and he’s fairly successful. Rocky spends the first hour visiting his wife’s
grave, checking out old haunts, adopting a mangy dog, hanging with his mopey
old brother-in-law Paulie (Burt Young), and telling old war stories to his
customers, the better to remind us that Rocky’s a regular guy. It’s no
coincidence that you only hear him talking about Apollo, who defeated him in
the first film, or that the sixth film in the series has no number. Stallone
would like us to forget the other, mediocre sequels, so the story closely
follows the outline of the first and best film. Rocky has decided to return to
boxing, but gets an unexpected shot at the big time. There’s even a sort of
substitute (younger) Adrian, sweetly played by Geraldine Hughes. Bill Conti’s
original theme music is there, too. I think Stallone would have dug Burgess
Meredith up if he could have. In films II through V, Stallone
worked hard at coming up with ways to keep Rocky seeming like an underdog, even
though he kept winning, making for some heavy melodrama. Mason Dixon, played by
the light heavyweight Antonio Tarver, doesn’t seem as menacing as Clubber Lang
or Ivan Drago (from III and IV), but pushing 60 will make any
boxer seem like an underdog. Still, Stallone looks better than almost any other
60-year-old guy. (For the record, Archie Moore, at 48, was the oldest man to
ever hold a real world title.)
- If all of the above
sounds pretty dull, you’ll want to avoid this. There is only one boxing match,
and there’s not a lot of plot. The other characters are there more to show you
that Rocky is still the same guy from the streets of Philadelphia, rather than
move the story along. I’m not sure why Dixon’s handlers think beating up an old
guy will boost his image; he’s one of Rocky’s duller opponents in any case.
= **3/4 I enjoyed
this for what it was, a walk down memory lane, which it clearly was for
Stallone, the actor and writer, too. If you’ve wondered, hey, what would Rocky
be doing in late middle age, and would he still train by drinking raw eggs and
punching meat, this is your film.
