Review and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters even though I’ll have to sacrifice seeing such wonders as Cocaine Bear (Elizabeth, Banks).
Creed III (Michael B. Jordan) rated PG-13 117 min.
Here’s the trailer:
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If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: In Creed III (this link's not much of an official site but it does lead you to theatrical and streaming options for the movie), after his dramatic winning of boxing’s World Heavyweight Championship in Creed II (Steven Caple Jr., 2018; review in our November 29, 2018 posting), Adonis “Donnie” Creed (Jordan as actor/director)—son of former Champ Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), an opponent/then-close-friend-of-also-Champ-Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone)—Donnie has retired to stay healthy, spend his life with wife Bianca (Tessa Thompson) and little daughter, hearing-impaired Amara (Mila Davis-Kent), yet while managing new Champ Felix “El Guerrero” Chavez (José Benavidez Jr.), set for a challenge from Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu), with a heritage from some of the previous Rocky and Creed movies. But then Donnie’s old friend, Golden Gloves Champion Damian “Diamond Dame” Anderson (Jonathan Majors), shows up after 18 years in prison (flashbacks reveal how these 2 chums years ago in 2002, who’d shared time in a group home, went to a liquor store where Donnie got into a fight with a guy named Leon [Aaron Alexander], then ran away while Dame was arrested, sent away for much of his life). Dame wants a title shot which becomes viable thorough Donnie when Drago is injured at a party; Dame wins the match, becomes Champ, but Donnie realizes Drago’s assailant was set up by Dane, who’s turned from friendship to public media assaults on Donnie. ⇒This leads to Donnie coming out of retirement to fight Dane, leading to Donnie’s victory as a once-again-Champ, then a reconciliation with Dane.⇐
So What? While my viewership-interest has generally waned over these many decades in the progress of the Rocky/Creed franchise (Rocky [John G. Avildsen, 1976], Rocky II [Stallone, 1979], Rocky III [Stallone, 1982], Rocky IV [Stallone, 1985], Rocky V [Avildsen, 1990], Rocky Balboa [Stallone, 2006], Creed [Coogler, 2015; review in our December 2, 2015 posting], Creed II [Steven Caple Jr., 2018; review in our November 29, 2018 posting], and this current edition), I very much enjoyed the launch of these movies in 1976 (although I’ll never see Rocky as more deserving of Oscar’s Best Picture prize than the magnificent All the President’s Men [Alan J. Pakula, 1976]) and have found some inspiring moments in the various sequels especially the first Creed, although I’ll admit it’s getting a bit tiresome seeing such similar situations in movie after movie where the protagonist has to keep pumping himself up to take on a seemingly-unstoppable-challenger, with both Rocky and Adonis winning most of their bouts or at least showing themselves to be worthy contenders even if a split decision might not go their way. This latest episode has some interesting moments about how circumstances impact the former friendships of once-close-friends (along with the sad situation so frequent in this franchise of an admirable character dying), but the outcome in the ring is no surprise while the scenes of interpersonal combat are reasonably-brutal as this “sport” continues to show how vicious it can be for the boxers while patrons revel in the physical poundings, living out vicarious fantasies of beating up antagonists in their own lives or applying observations of every second of body-beatings as another step toward a prophesied-payday. It all works out functionally-enough in Creed III, but for me none of this Rocky/Creed depiction of in-ring-brutality nor the passions that drive a would-be-champion into constant-combat can begin to match what was so astoundingly-done in the docudrama of Middleweight Champion Jake LaMotta (Best Actor Oscar winner Robert De Niro in Raging Bull [Martin Scorsese, 1980])—but note that first item in Related Links below which has a different opinion on what could be called the best boxing movie ever made.
Bottom Line Final Comments: Creed III’s been in domestic (U.S.-Canada) theaters since March 3, 2023 making to date $153.5 million in grosses—#7 last weekend after 6 weeks in release ($267.5 million worldwide), but now can also be found for $19.99 rental streaming at Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Vudu, etc. It’s well-supported by the CCAL, with 89% positive reviews at Rotten Tomatoes and an encouraging (for them) 73% average score at Metacritic. For me, this Rocky/Creed series is running its concepts about as far into the ground as can be expected when your only dramatic conflict is who’s going to fight whom for a boxing championship, who’s going to win with whatever impact that will have on the primary characters. The filmmakers of these stories manage to keep them interesting enough while they’re on screen, but, more so for me than the overall CCAC, this is just becoming a bit of a tiresome repetition I likely would have avoided if there had been anything else more interesting to watch on streaming (I’ll be going to Air [Ben Affleck] in a theater sometime soon, so please just bear [but not Cocaine Bear, even as it’s now an option for $19.99 rental streaming] with me as streaming options—and COVID-seemingly-safe-venues—become available). I acknowledge that Creed III deserved more attention (even as I’m basically underwhelmed) than I’m giving it here, but it’s been a long week for me with notable time paid to my local Golden State basketballers (now finally in the playoffs after a lackluster season following their NBA championship last year), my struggling Oakland Athletics’ miserable baseball season beginning (now 3-9, with underpaid pitchers and batters who just can’t retain leads), some marvelous hours over Easter weekend with family and friends, and a miserable waste of a day this Tuesday with phishers who almost reeled me in with a clever attempt to gain access to one of my email accounts.
With all of that alternative-investment of my focus and energy over the last few days this is the best that I could do, so if you want more info on Creed III you might check out this site. My tank’s about empty, encouraging me to just close out with my usual tactic of a Musical Metaphor, this time inspired by my Tuesday night re-watching of a Netflix disc, the marvelous (but sad in many aspects) Coming Home (Hal Ashby, 1978), the Rolling Stones’ “Out of Time” (on their 1966 Aftermath and 1967 Flowers albums in slightly different versions) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXP1 MSFwMnc, which originally is about a romance gone wrong but now could be both Donnie and Dame telling each other—if you de-gender the original a bit—“You don’t know what’s going on / You’ve been away for much too long / But you can’t come back and think you are still mine / You’re out of touch, my baby / My poor discarded baby / I said Baby, Baby, Baby, you’re out of time.” As this conflict resolves itself we’ll see who’s truly “out of time,” when their inevitable pounding begins.
SHORT TAKES
In my previous posting I admit I was a bit snarky about how ABC TV always seems to run The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956)—a flamboyantly-Baroque episode of cinema if there ever was one—on the Saturday night before Easter Sunday, seemingly mixing up when to show a major Old Testament/Torah story rather than an more-appropriate New Testament narrative, although this year such a broadcast might have been more well-placed given that last week we had the rare-convergence last Thursday with the start of Passover and the Last Supper remembrance on Holy Thursday, although ABC still seemed to be off-balance a bit by running … Commandments a couple of weeks ago. Further, I was perplexed that none of the major networks ever seem to run an actual Jesus movie on Holy Saturday night, only to find that my local San Francisco-area PBS station actually did schedule The Greatest Story Ever Told (George Stevens, David Lean, Jean Negulesco, 1965) for last Saturday night (not that I cared to watch it again as, being raised Catholic, I’ve had plenty of exposure to these Gospel accounts [also not needed again was John Wayne as the Roman centurion verifying Jesus on the cross as the Son of God], with Creed III my choice for the night), which I wish I could take some credit for on our local channel 9 but that schedule was published a month ago so maybe they were just on my wavelength rather than responding to a brilliant Two Guys ramble. Anyway, I hope all of you had a happy holiday, whatever you might have been celebrating (including another globally-impactful-monotheistic-religion, honoring Islam's holy month of Ramadan, which began the evening of Wednesday March 22, 2023, then continues until Friday April 21, 2023—but here in the Western world you’ll not likely find anything cinematic focused on this tradition unless it’s imported from another country where it was made to appeal to devout Muslim audiences).
I’ll also note that while staying at my brother-in-law’s on Easter Sunday night I watched Don't Worry Darling (Olivia Wilde, 2022)—with him and my wonderful wife (of almost 33 years), Nina—on Netflix disc which was a bit hard to follow for me, mostly because across the length of the day I’d had maybe one-too-many-tasty-beverages so I sort of dozed during some crucial moments early on as we learn about this strange Southern California desert community in the late 1950s with an overall attitude that sort of merges The Stepford Wives (Bryan Forbes, 1975) and the recent Apple TV+ streaming series, Hello Tomorrow, into a story-flow that I missed a bit of at the start while dozing off so Nina and I watched it again on HBO Max on Monday where I could acknowledge all of the plot details, even as I still don’t quite know what’s going on in this not-quite-real-community (so there’s also aspects of Disney+’s 2021WandaVision miniseries), nor do I have any clue how it ends up even after seeing it twice, but you might find it somewhat fascinating if for nothing else to see on screen what’s been extended beyond necessity regarding on-set-conflicts between director Wilde and various members of the cast. I considered sticking a short review in here but decided to stay with my earlier decision to not give any further attention to 2022 releases, especially this far into 2023, but you’re welcome to explore it on your own although the OCCU won’t support you with a 38% positive response at RT, a 48% average MC score (I don’t find it to be nearly that repulsive, though).
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
17 sports movies nominated for Oscar's Best Picture, ending up with Rocky and Raging Bull.
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