DECEMBER 1, 2015
Remember a week or so ago, I had a column that mentioned 10 performances that should be on your Oscar radar as Best Supporting Actor? Well, you can add an 11th name to the list — Sylvester Stallone in “Creed.”
Yeah, I was surprised, too. In fact, I was surprised at almost everything about “Creed.” If you can believe it, this is the seventh (!) film in the “Rocky” franchise (and even though it’s called “Creed,” it follows the “Rocky” template to the letter), but “Creed” is by far the best “Rocky” since the original.
People think of the franchise as this huge tentpole series, but those of us around in 1976 remember that the original “Rocky” was basically an indie film picked up by United Artists almost as an afterthought. After all, it was the brainchild of a promising but stuggling young character actor named Sylvester Stallone (whose usual credit at that time was “Thug #2”). His struggle to rise above his station to become an actor/writer mirrored the struggle of the young Philadelphia boxer Rocky Balboa, giving the film an extra reason to resonate with moviegoers. When it began to test well with audiences, UA decided to release the film late in the year to enhance its possible awards chances.
The gamble paid off, and the little indie-that-could won three Oscars, including Best Picture, triumphing over such modern classics as “Network,” “Taxi Driver” and “All the President’s Men.” Demand was high for a “Rocky 2,” but with each successive sequel, the quality of the films began to plummet until (ugh) “Rocky V” seemed to put an end to the series in 1990. An attempt to revive the character occurred 16 years later with “Rocky Balboa,” which was met with a gigantic “meh” by critics and audiences alike.
Enter Ryan Coogler, the 29 year-old writer/director of last year’s acclaimed “Fruitvale Station,” the story of the last 24 hours in the life of a young Oakland man who is shot to death by police on New Year’s Day. That kind of serious subject matter seems hardly to be the right calling card for a “Rocky” movie, but it turns out that the choice of Coogler was an inspired one.
Coogler’s brilliant idea was to retell the “Rocky” story through another character but one who is connected to the “Rocky” world. “Creed” focuses on young Adonis “Donnie” Creed, the illegitimate son of Rocky’s former rival and friend Apollo Creed. When his father is killed in the ring, young Donnie is bounced around among various youth homes until he is rescued by Creed’s widow Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad — so great to see her back on the big screen), who brings him into her Los Angeles mansion and onto the straight and narrow.
As a young adult, however, Donnie (now Michael B. Jordan) continues to be obsessed by boxing and quits his promising financial job to seek a career in the ring. Mary Anne, who does not want to see Donnie killed in the same way as her husband, instructs the staff at the family gym that no one is to agree to train him. Undaunted, Donnie flies to Philadelphia where he seeks the only man who can do the job, Rocky Balboa (you know who).
Rocky, however, is perfectly content to run his Italian restaurant (named Adrian’s, of course) and wants no part of returning to the sport. But Donnie perseveres, and Rocky soon is back in the gym world that he so greatly loved. You can pretty much write the rest of the movie yourself, but as the film hits the familiar beats of the “Rocky” story that we all know and love, Coogler and co-writer Aaron Covington manage to put a fresh spin on so many of them that it seems like we’re experiencing them for the first time. Remember the famous scene when Rocky was cheered as he ran through the streets of Philadelphia? Here, Donnie gets the same salute, but it’s by a group of young motor bikers who do wheelies as he runs through the streets. Familiar, but fresh, too.
Coogler is generally an unobtrusive director, placing the camera at the service of the story. The startling exception is the sequence of Donnie’s first big fight, which Coogler films in a single shot and captured entirely inside the ring, so that the fighters punch just inches from the lens, and the camera ducks and swerves, giving the scene an immediacy and impact that I haven’t gotten from any boxing scene since “Raging Bull.”
Yet where Coogler excels is in character. Donnie has his own Adrian in Bianca (Tessa Thompson, in a wonderful performance), a promising musician who is gradually losing her hearing but plays on because that is what she has to do. And he has his own snarling villain in Liverpudlian boxer “Pretty” Ricky Conlan (Tony Bellew, who’s clearly having a ball) who dogs Donnie until the moment of The Big Fight. Yet both of these familiar archetypes are given dimension that only helps deepen the audience’s connection with the film.
Still the film wouldn’t have worked to this degree without its two stars. Coogler is once again reunited with his “Fruitvale” star Jordan, who displays a unique combination of sweetness and aggression that very few contemporary actors can bring to the table. It worked well in “Fruitvale,” but it’s perfect here, and within moments, Jordan has the audience in the palm of his hand.
Then there’s Sylvester Stallone. At this point, I suspect that Mr. Stallone is well aware of his own limitations as an actor, but here he works beautifully within those limits. For a character best known as bellowing like a beast, Stallone decides to play Rocky here as quiet, almost modest, in his tone, resigned in knowing what the rest of his life will be like, only to have it upended when Donnie walks into his life. It’s a gorgeous, career-rebuilding performance and one, I suspect, that Academy voters will eat up. He is definitely in the Supporting Actor mix and has a decent shot to make the Final 5. Who’d-a thought?
Arguably the best-directed “Rocky” movie of the series, it’s difficult to believe that “Creed” is only Coogler’s second film. Yes, he never lets you forget that he knows it’s just a “Rocky” movie, but when he does it, he does it with style.
GRADE: B+
