REVIEW

Creed II is unashamedly formulaic. Fortunately for the viewer, the formula is a good one.

Veteran boxing trainers talk about the old left-right combo. Here it is in narrative form: brutality in the ring, poignancy out of it, thumped by one, hammered by the other. That is, until finally, the audience are on the ropes, likely to feel somewhat drained, wholly entertained, and perhaps also just a little bit suckered, having fallen again for the venerable Rocky one-two.

More than four decades and seven sequels have passed since the 1976 original, so it’s no surprise that the formula is as polished as it is. Some things remain unchanged; Sylvester Stallone’s voice still seems to emanate from the bottom of a mineshaft. The Great Mumbler, also credited as producer and co-writer, is on top form here, just as he was two years ago in Creed.

As before, though, the acting laurels go mostly to Michael B. Jordan. He delivers a terrific performance as the newly crowned, world heavyweight champ Adonis Creed.

In the previous film, he discovered who his late father was. None other than Apollo Creed, who back in the day fought and befriended Rocky Balboa (Stallone). That’s why Adonis – sensibly known to friends and family as Donnie – wanted Rocky in his corner as he embarked on a pro boxing career that lacked the usual springboards of deprivation and delinquency. Adonis had money and was properly educated. What did he want with sweaty pugilism?

It was unresolved daddy issues that made a fighter of him. In Creed II, the psychology of parent-child relationship looms almost as large as Dolph Lundgren, back in the series for the first time since Rocky IV (1985) as big Ivan Drago, the man who battered Apollo Creed to death in the ring.

DRAGO has an equally sizable son, Viktor (Florian Munteanu), whose dearest wish is to flatten Adonis. That would avenge the humiliation that the old man later suffered at the fists of Rocky, leading not only to exile from Mother Russia but also the departure of mother Ludmila, Viktor’s own parent (Brigitte Nielson, the former Mrs Sly Stallone, also last seen in Rocky IV).

Ivan and Viktor duly turn up in Rocky’s home town of Philadelphia to throw down the gauntlet. “Because of you I lost everything,” growls Ivan to Rocky. “Country. Respect. Wife.” Not to mention possessive pronouns and definite articles.

So, there are mummy issues, too, in this film. What is more, Rocky is trying to address a painful father-son estrangement of his own.

And if all that weren’t enough, Adonis’s hearing-impaired girlfriend Bianca (Tessa Thompson) also makes him a daddy in the course of Creed II, so he must balance his new parental responsibilities with his obligations to his dead father as he decides whether or not (as if you really can’t guess) to take on Viktor Drago’s challenge.

Any good boxing movie was never just about the boxing. Despite the yawning gap, at times, between the story and any kind of plausibility, Creed II really is a good boxing movie. In the real world, fighters don’t just emerge from nowhere to challenge for world titles, just as punches don’t resound with thwumpfs like baby elephants landing on a mattress.

There’s a cracking soundtrack, some of it provided by the lovely Bianca (a successful singer, despite her deafness), and the film is directed with a tremendously sure touch by Steven Caple Jnr.

At just 30, he is even younger than Jordan, his leading man, but evidently Stallone wanted someone of that generation at the tiller. The film production released in late 2018 was a gamble, but it pays off.

Verdict: Deserves success.

★★★★