Best: Cop Land (1997) Though Stallone's surprisingly fragile performance in Creed is beautifully observed and wonderfully restrained with touches of pathos and self-deprecation, it would have been nothing without Cop Land almost twenty years before it. In both cases, Stallone plays a tender-hearted character wrestling with personal demons, the weight of his past and pressure to meet expectations. In both cases too he is a hero trapped in a broken shell, with a lion heart and some quite wonderful philosophy, but Cop Land feels fresher and braver, considering it came in 1997. Worst: Grudge Match (2013) Picking Stallone's worst is a lot like trying to pick a favourite turd an ocean of slurry (after all he managed to go ten years without making anything beyond garbage), but considering the parallels with Creed and Rocky and the manipulative way Stallone's profile was traded on, Grudge Match feels like an insult. It is painfully unfunny, without a single smart observation and it should have been shaken off as easily as Stallone initially resisted the urge to play a retired Rocky.
