04/08/09 - Rocky

Rocky (1976, 119 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075148/

I will admit that I was pretty surprised by this film. Yeah, I'd heard it was well regarded but I honestly can't remember a good boxing film I'd seen (really I think I've only seen Raging Bull, which I was disappointed with).

The thing that made the movie so much better than Raging Bull was that Stallone did a better job at convincing me he was a boxer and that it was so much shorter (Raging Bull seems to drag on and on). Stallone shows he can truly act in this movie. I guess being an action star, people automatically assume that he can't act and can just have big muscles or something, but he puts on an amazing performance. Much of this is probably due to the fact that many parts of the story come from his real life and he understands the passion needed for those scenes.

This was one of those movies where everything just seemed to come together to make a quality film. For instance, it seems that picking anyone other than Talia Shire for Adrian would instantly make the movie worse. She was the perfect blend between beauty and bland for the role she played.

Overall, I gave the movie an 8/10. Rocky is honestly a movie I could rewatch again and not be disappointed. I'm pretty sure I couldn't say that for Raging Bull. I'll probably be watching the remainder of the Rocky movies soon, so we'll see how they all stack up as a series, but Rocky has set the bar pretty high.