Film Review: Creed

Creed. Rated M (mature themes, violence and coarse language). 133 minutes. Directed by Ryan Coogler. Screenplay by Ryan Coogler and Aaron Covington.

Officially the seventh film in the Rocky series, Creed politely ignores the less successful Rocky V (1990) and Rocky Balboa (2006), and picks up where 1985’s Rocky IV left us.

Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) still mourns the loss of his wife Adrian (Talia Shire), and dutifully works in the restaurant he named in her honour. Meanwhile, Adonis Johnson (Alex Henderson) the young son of his great adversary (and eventually friend) Apollo Creed, is doing time in a juvenile justice centre for being unable to control his temper. When the late Apollo’s wife Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad) arrives to take the boy into her care, Adonis realises that this may be the second chance he has dreamed of.

Fast-forward seventeen years, and the restless Adonis (Michael B. Jordan) decides to quit his job at a financial services company to pursue his dream of becoming a champion boxer like his father, and begins by tracking down Rocky in the hope that he will become his trainer. While he is at first incredibly reluctant, Rocky gradually realises that the path to realising a lifetime’s resolution may lie in the future of this determined young man.

Coogler (Fruitvale Station) is in complete command of the cinematic history he is creating, and the great performances he elicits from his outstanding ensemble. His and Covington’s screenplay is the perfect combination of respect to the formidable Stallone’s iconic Rocky, and the passion, discipline and drive of a young boxer’s fearless ambition.

Jordan (Fruitvale Station) brings the many contradictions of Appollo’s rite of passage to the screen superbly – matching the great Stallone to perfection. Every one of their scenes together bristles with an emotionally-charged, powerful energy that, as the story powers up to its stunning conclusion, becomes almost overwhelming.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: The Expendables 3

The Expendables 3. Rated M (action violence and coarse language). 126 minutes. Directed by Patrick Hughes. Screenplay by Sylvester Stallone, Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt.

Verdict: Chaos reigns as the Kings of Cinema shoot lots of people.

You have to hand it to Sylvester Stallone. That The Expendables works at all is due not only to his monumental onscreen presence, but his ability to gather all his mates together into one of the largest ensembles in recent memory. And what a cast it is.

The spectacular opening sequence (there’s always one in an Expendables movie) sees Barney (Stallone) and the team freeing Doctor Death (Wesley Snipes) from a train that is delivering him to a high-tech prison. The team needs the good Doctor’s help intercepting a shipment of weapons being sent to arms trader Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson) in Somalia. When the operation goes pear-shaped, Barney retires the old team members and recruits a new, more agile and technologically savvy gang.

The fatal flaw in the concept lies in the casting of Mel Gibson, who is spectacular. Plagued with all sorts of public relations disasters in his private life, Gibson burns up the screen from start to finish. When you add Harrison Ford (who replaces Bruce Willis) and the indefatigable Arnold Schwarzenegger to the mix, the young’uns (including Kellan Lutz who is currently starring as Hercules) are at a distinct disadvantage.

Australian-born Hughes and cinematographer Peter Menzies Jr are on their way to becoming a formidable duo behind the camera, but the chronic over editing (Sean Albertson and Paul Harb) suggests that this is not the break-through they might have hoped for. There are some magnificent close-ups of Stallone, Gibson and Ford (whose faces reveal years of cinema history), but the bulk of this disappointing outing for the Kings of Cinema is just migraine-inducing, blood-lusty chaos.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Grudge Match

Grudge Match. Rated M (sporting violence and coarse language). 113 minutes. Directed by Peter Segal. Screenplay by Tim Kelleher and Rodney Rothman.

Verdict: Great idea on paper.

In theory at least, the cinematic possibilities of casting Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro in a film about boxers coming out of retirement to settle an old score, are obvious and irresistible. Stallone’s Rocky Balboa (first introduced to us in 1976’s Rocky), remains one of cinema’s most celebrated and instantly recognisable characters. De Niro’s performance as Jake LaMotta in Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece Raging Bull (1980), is regarded as one of the finest ever committed to film.

So is it fair to compare this ordinary outing to the vastly superior films from which it takes its attention-seeking premise? While Grudge Match never comes close to being a worthy companion to either those characters or the films in which they appeared to be forever burned into our memory, there is a curiosity bordering on the bizzare in watching Stallone as Henry 'Razor' Sharp and De Niro as Billy 'The Kid' McDonnen muddle their way through Kelleher and Rothman’s cliché-stricken script that never even begins to rise to the occasion.

Segal’s overly-reverential direction abandons his stars to flounder in the sense of their own, now-fading magnificence, while the scenes that come close to working (De Niro pleading with Stallone to go through with the fight outside his house one night simmers beautifully) are too few and far between.

The supporting cast, including the exceptional Jon Bernthal (Snitch, The Walking Dead) as McDonnen’s son BJ and the veteran Alan Arkin (Argo, Little Miss Sunshine) as Sharp’s trainer Louis who has seen better days, contribute fine work – arguably all the more effective because they appear saddled with less baggage from the glorious past. It is also a past that Grudge Match seeks to capitalise on, and one that ultimately brings De Niro, Stallone and the film itself down to earth with a deafening and somewhat embarrassing thud.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.