Rocky Balboa rides again, in Stallone’s enjoyable virtual remake of the first film
Director: Sylvester Stallone
Cast: Sylvester Stallone (Rocky Balboa), Talia Shire (Adrian Balboa), Burt Young (Paulie Pennino), Carl Weathers (Apollo Creed), Burgess Meredith (Mickey Goldmill), Tony Burton (‘Duke’ Evers), Sylvia Meals (Mary Anne Creed), Joe Spinell (Tony Gazzo)
It’s minutes after the end of that shock title fight won (just) by Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers – very good here as a curled ball of frustration), but already the champ is smarting since the moral victory was won by plucky challenger Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone). Now Apollo wants a rematch. It’s the last thing Rocky – or his soon-to-be-wife Adrian (Talia Shire) want: Rocky’s eyesight is shot and he wants to retire to a well-earned career of cashing in on his fame. But when his money dries up, Rocky has no choice but to saddle up once again – only this time he and trainer Mickey (Burgess Meredith) are “gonna eat lightnin’ and crap thunder” till Rocky wins the bout outright.
I like to think of Rocky II as being, just like Rocky semi-autobiographical. If the first Rocky was about plucky small-timer Sylvester Stallone getting a shot at the big-time, Rocky II is about the hero returning to the scene of his success, but only on his own terms. Stallone had followed up Rocky with a film he wrote and starred in about union politics (F*I*S*T) and a would-be epic on an Italian-American family Paradise Alley which he wrote, directed and starred in that flopped. I’m guessing part of him didn’t want to be (at that time) just the guy who did Rocky. He wanted more.
That’s the vibe I get in a film where Rocky spends the first hour telling anyone who’ll listen he doesn’t want to fight no more. If he can’t make a career in advertising – and Rocky’s stumbling inarticulacy and border-line illiteracy quickly show that a filming career ain’t a goer – he wants a job in an office. Like Stallone pushing higher-brow passion projects, Rocky wants a new chapter. And, just like (I assume) Stallone was met by executives saying “just make another Rocky” so Rocky meets a (admittedly sympathetic) office manager who basically politely asks him “why don’t you just go back to fighting”
Just as Rocky fights Creed on his own terms, because it’s his decision, Stallone made Rocky II on his own terms: he would direct. The film we end up with is decent, but honestly little more than a retread. This is designed for people who saw and loved the first film – and at that time might not even have seen it since the cinema. It’s a nostalgia vehicle after only three years!
The basic structure is the same. Rocky shuffles around, bashful and quiet. He tries to be something he’s not and does his best to fit in (buying a home, car and posh new coat) but he never loses track of his fundamental decency. He still has a sweet relationship with Adrian – their ice rink date is basically restaged here with a zoo-set proposal (a neat joke since Rocky said in the previous film he couldn’t imagine a date to a zoo). Just as they had a brief will-they-won’t-they, so the couple have a crisis as Adrian struggles to support Rocky’s decision to go back into the ring and falls into a brief coma after a painful delivery of their son.
The training is all pretty much the same – as it would be in almost every film to come – including a call back to Rocky’s epic run up those steps, this time as the culmination of a run around seemingly the whole of Philadelphia, with half the cities kids running behind him cheering. Then he takes to the ring for another 15-round, mano-a-mano face-off with Apollo, sweat, blood and fists flying, Rocky switching to right-hand from southpaw.
Rocky II is entertaining – but it’s a diet coke rehash of Rocky, with all the same tricks but an ever-so-slightly diminished reward. Probably because nothing about it surprises you one little bit. It’s a film that’s looking to recapture that warm glow from 1976 and doesn’t aspire to anything more. It even ends with our hero bellowing “Adrian!” at the end. You’d have a decent quiz if you cut the two films up and threw random scenes at people and asked them to guess which Rocky film they were from.
Saying that, the franchise pretty much exhausted its kitchen-sink roots here. By the time we get too Rocky III there was no way the film was going to remember that Rocky’s eyesight was going or that he was a plucky underdog fighter. From here, Rocky would turn into a chiselled slab of marble and Rocky would fight Hulk Hogan, hire a robot butler and bring down communism. Compared to the nonsense that would follow in films 3 and 4, Rocky II really does look like the last time we had a Rocky film that might just have been directed by Ken Loach.
Movie Musings 