Rocky
“Rocky” has taken it on the chin over the decades as a crowd-pleasing Oscar-winner in a decade of serious, gritty winners where the American auteur was king. I would argue, however, that people who feel that way either have not seen it in a while, or are jealous at how well John G. Avildsen and Sylvester Stallone basically created a subgenre. That subgenre is the underdog sports movie, and it’s one that I have a particular weakness for. But “Rocky’s” place as a great Best Picture winner in the decade of “The Godfather,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “The French Connection” is deserved, even if I wouldn’t entirely agree myself, because it does everything so well in telling the story it’s telling.
I think the increasingly cartoonish nature of the sequels, at least the ones before 2006’s “Rocky Balboa,” have distorted the view of Avildsen’s wonderful original film, which would have been perfectly fine as a single story of a hard-on-his-luck fighter who finds his way into the ring with a champion, and goes the distance. Stallone’s script in this one is lovely in the way it presents Balboa’s blue-collar living as a boxer at a local gym, and as a debt collector for a local loan shark, and how we cheer for Rocky in more ways than just in the ring. We see his sweet courtship of the shy Adrian (Talia Shire); him giving a guy a break for being $70 short in his debt by NOT breaking his thumb; Rocky trying to help a young girl be better than who she is; and the frustration Mickey (Burgess Meredith) has with him when he isn’t using his natural boxing talent well. This isn’t just about Rocky as a boxer, this is about Rocky as a man, and that’s one of the best things about the movie. It’s something Avildsen did later with “The Karate Kid,” and even the first sequel in that series- the sport may be what leads us to the finish line in these movies, but it’s the character that drives the story. In later installments, the sports elements were the only thing that the makers seemed to care about, and think that we cared about as an audience. There’s a reason the best films in this franchise (“Balboa,” “Creed,” and even “Creed II”) are the best- they focus more on the individuals at the center, and not the boxing that drives them.
It had been a good, long while since I had seen “Rocky,” so it was great being reminded of not only how well it holds up, but also how much it cares about the story its telling. The title shot that Rocky gets with Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) is basically a subplot that builds into the main driving point of the story it’s telling, and it was a smart way of building the story on Stallone’s part as a writer. Rocky is a boxer throughout the film, but that’s not all he is; Avildsen’s film cares as much about the relationship that builds with Adrian as it does the creed fight, and I love Talia Shire in this film. Her interactions with Rocky are wonderful and about Rocky showing her something within herself her brother Paulie (Burt Young) doesn’t really let her see in herself that often. Like Rocky, she’s been beaten down by the people closest to her (Paulie for Adrian, Mickey for Rocky), but we see as the film goes on that it’s a reflection on those people, and, in Mickey’s case, a belief that Rocky is not living up to his full potential. In each other, Rocky and Adrian look to meet up to their full potential, and I’m now wanting to rewatch the series again to see how that plays into their coupling leading to how her passing has affected him in “Rocky Balboa”; it’s been a while since I’ve seen a lot of those sequels.
What made “Rocky” a winner with audiences, however, and what continues to engage us about his story, is the iconic images this boxer’s journey brought to us. It’s him racing up those steps with Bill Conti’s triumphant “Gonna Fly Now” playing. It’s the montage of him training with Mickey, and him punching the meat in Paulie’s job. It’s him in that first match when he wins and gets $40, and then when he goes the distance against Apollo, who will later become his best friend. And it’s him yelling for Adrian as people are trying to talk to him after the fight, because he can only think of one thing in that moment, and it’s the person he loves. You can’t help but cheer as this film goes on.
