04/09/09 - Rocky II

Rocky II (1979, 119 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079817/

I wasn't expecting much from this sequel. I'd heard from most people that the first Rocky and then one of the intermediate ones (usually III since it has Mr. T and Hulk Hogan or IV since it has Dolph Lundgren as "the Russian") are the only good movies in the series. As it turned out I thought this was a great sequel to Rocky.

The movie continues immediately from where Rocky left off. The first half is essentially Rocky's new life and the problems he is continuing to have paying bills and what not. The second half is him training for the fight with Apollo Creed. Stallone does a great job again at making Rocky a completely believable character and not just some tough action star attempting to act.

When I read that the plot was Rocky v. Apollo again I thought it was going to be boring since that's who fought the last time. However, with the story built up around revenge for Apollo and Rocky not really wanting to fight but realizing that's who he is, the story ended up being completely new and I really liked it.

Overall, I gave the film a 7/10. It wasn't as good as the first but it was still good. Everyone did a good job, but it just didn't have that "feel" that Rocky had.