Rocky Balboa
When I first heard that Sylvester Stallone was to reprise his character of Rocky Balboa for one last outing a good 30 years since he first hit our screens, I was extremely skeptical and honestly....who the hell wasn't? This felt like such a desperate attempt for Stallone to re-live the glory days of the past for an actor/director who hadn't had a hit movie in years. No one cares about Stallone in the 21st century, he is an icon of days gone by. Then the trailers came out and we were all saying... "Wow, Stallone sure looks in great shape for a guy pushing 60". Then the movie came out in the States and the critics are going mad over this thing. "Best movie since the original" they were all saying. I started to believe in Slyvester Stallone. I started to believe in Rocky Balboa. I wanted to see him go "toe to toe, saying I AM". But the movie wasn't coming out in the U.K. for another month. What do I do? 
Well cable television here in the U.K. came to my rescue, they screened all 5 Rocky movies on Boxing Day which I recorded onto my Sky Plus player. So over the course of the last three weeks, Dan and I have sat through the whole Rocky saga. We watched him do the impossible and go the distance against Apollo Creed before becoming a superhero of sorts and fighting Mr. T as the brutal Clubber Lang, Dolph Lundgren as the Soviet Giant Ivan Drago and even Hulk Hogan as the over-the-top wrestler Thunderlips. What struck me about watching the original, a movie I hadn't actually seen in years, was how strong a movie and how inspiring a story it truly is. I had forgotten how good a movie it was. I suddenly saw why we needed another movie, after the hideous finale that would have been Rocky V. So onto Rocky Balboa... 
Stallone returns to the roots of the character, as we see our former two-time heavyweight champion still living in Philadelphia. His wife Adrian (Talia Shire, who's not in the movie) has now passed, but she still haunts his everyday life. He visits her grave every morning and now runs his own restaurant "Adrians", where he is a big local celebrity. Every night, he goes round from table to table, telling old stories of his career to people who have probably heard him tell the story a million times before, but they are happy to hear it one more time anyway. Returning in the film is Burt Young as Paulie. He is "meaner" and definitely "darker" than ever before. He too is haunted by Adrian's death as she was always the good part of him, and with her gone he has nothing left but his shitty job. Also returning is the character of Rocky's son, but this time he isn't played by Sage Stallone, instead it's Heroes star Milo Ventimiglia who got the role. For a pivotal character in the movie, I found the guy's acting weak and extremely inconsistent. During the scene where Stallone is giving some of the best acting of his career, telling his son why he should be fighting, the guy just can't keep up. You all should know the hook of the film by now. A computer simulated fight between the World Champion and Rocky Balboa is shown on TV, with Balboa coming out on top. This gets people talking and Rocky himself believing that he might still have one last fight left in him. The stage is quickly set. It's going to be an exhibition match in Las Vegas... Rocky Balboa
vs. Mason "The Line" Dixon. I liked that Dixon (played by former boxer Antonio Tarver) wasn't portrayed as a bad guy at all. In truth, I felt a little sorry for the guy. He is clearly the best at his sport but with no worthy opponents and challengers on the boxing scene, no-one could give a shit about him and they boo him out of the building when he knocks out his opponents in the first round. A clear and not-so-subtle look at the state of boxing today. The music video montage is there, of course with "Gonna Fly Now" blazing through the speakers. These moments are probably the funniest of the film as we see Rocky struggling to train, his body not able to pull off the things it once was. Unfortunately, for me, there wasn't enough of this. The aged Rocky becomes a contender to quickly. More time spent on showing Rocky struggling to get into shape and more scenes of self doubt would have been welcomed. I wasn't given enough time to believe that Rocky could really get into that ring again. One moment I truly loved was the inspirational speech from Rocky trainer Duke (Tony Burton), who in the film's most uplifting moment had this great monologue.... Were gonna hit him so hard his ancestors are gonna feel it. Hes gonna feel like he just tried to kiss an express train. Lets start building... HURTIN BOMBS! I felt like cheering myself. 
The fight itself was shot like a real HBO boxing bout on PPV television, which really gave you a feeling that you were watching a real event rather than a movie and it did help to suspend your disbelief. Problem with this though is that we are distanced from our hero in the scene that we need to be the closest to him. They rectify this after two rounds, and the movie changes it's approach in the fight to being more cinematic, although it isn't executed half as well as it should be. Indeed the fight ends up being a complete mess. We have constant flashbacks, jump cuts, bad musical scores, bad shaky camera work and the whole theory of "show, don't tell" is completely abandoned by Stallone. We are forced into thinking something, rather than working it out for ourselves. We are dictated into thinking that Rocky might die from the constant splices of Adrian's grave during the fight. Bill Conti's famous musical cue at the film's climax felt forced and seemed placed there to tell us that we should be feeling for this guy now but personally, I didn't feel anything. Not the desperate hope for Rocky to win in the first movie, or the joy at him succeeding in it's sequel. It also didn't help that the climax felt rushed, which was the big criticism I always had with the end of the first movie. One moment I did enjoy in the fight was a moment when Rocky is knocked down from a punch from Dixon, and Rocky shrugs it off his mind thinking he should easily be able to get up from that. But no, his body isn't working. The count goes 6, 7, 8 and you can see him thinking "Jesus Christ, that wasn't that hard. I'm going to lose because I'm to old I can't even fucking stand up!". It's only for a brief second, but I loved it. There are lots of other little problems I could really pick out with this movie but one glaring problems comes to mind. The whole sub plot with Little Marie (you know, the girl who called him "Creepo" in the original) and her African-American son "Steps" I could have done without. It doesn't help that at first he is indicated as being a big 
pivotal character but he totally disappears from the screen. Was he a possible victim of the editing room perhaps? Finally then, A vast improvement over Rocky's IV and V but when all is said and done, the movie falls somewhere between Rocky II and III, with of course the original standing out as the franchise's knockout punch. rating: 3
It's hard to see where Slyvester Stallone ends and Rocky Balboa begins after all these years and this is surely his most personal film of his career. It's to his credit that he has stayed true to himself and released a honest tale that returns to the simple roots of the character that has always been a existential version of himself. Not bad, but far from great...Rocky Balboa is a worthy addition and a fitting finale to one of cinema's most popular franchises.