When the trailer to this movie was shown so many times earlier, I was intrigued by it and wanted to find out more (I never did saw the first movie). After watching that one via online streaming, I thought it was a good film and decided it would be nice to see the second one. But my wife did not really enjoy and she did not finish it. Hence I saw this new movie by myself last night when it premiered in Indonesia. OK, we will start with the movie now.
Brief Story Line
Few years after the events in the first movie, Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan - Black Panther, Fantastic Four etc) had been a popular figure in boxing, especially since he became the heavy weight champion of the world. His life also was in the best shape with the support from his love Bianca (Tessa Thompson - Thor: Ragnarok, Sorry to Bother You etc), his trainer Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone - Escape Plan 2, Rambo series etc) and his step mother Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad - The Cosby Show etc).
However things started to become very hard for Adonis when he got the challenge from a stronger and bigger Russian boxer named Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu) via sleazy promoter Buddy Marcelle (Russel Hornsby - Grimm TV series etc). Viktor was the son of Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren - Showdown in Little Tokyo, The Expendables series etc) the boxer who "killed" Adonis' father Apollo Creed more than 30 years before.
With so many things going against him, could Adonis fight and get his revenge against Drago? Find them all in this heavy drama with some amazing boxing fight scenes.
End of Brief Story Line
Just like its predecessor and previous Rocky series, this movie successfully blend the drama with some fantastically done boxing sequences. Since I already knew that this was a drama movie, I went along with the story which was having a slow pace and patiently await for the boxing actions which did not disappoint me. If there is 1 thing that I would have loved more was the boxing fights in the early part of the movie which I thought was too little. Personally it would be more entertaining to me if there were more of those before the ultimate finale, but then it would not have enough screen time for the more dramatic moments.
In this second movie, I thought that Adonis Creed character was still similar to the first one who was hot headed and sometimes clouded by his father's legacy. But I really loved how they developed him especially towards the end of the movie. Michael B. Jordan did a really fantastic job portraying this boxer. I also loved the appearance of the rest of the cast, like Stallone as the old Rocky Balbo and Phylicia Rashad as Adonis' step mother whom I thought her aura as a wonderful mother was amazing.
And let's not forget our main "villains" in here, the father and son Ivan & Viktor Drago. This part certainly brought back so much memories from when I saw the 1985 Rocky IV that I thought was a really great boxing movie. In fact, that (and Rocky III) were the movies that made me quite liked watching the sport at least for the next decade during the Mike Tyson period. Though these past many years I did not really enjoy it anymore. Anyway, because of the history of Creed and Drago, this movie became truly intense and the build up towards the final fight were really wonderful. However, I thought that the plot was rather predictable. Somehow when we got to the middle of the movie, we could already guessed how the story would continue. Regardless though, it was still a great 2 hours + journey to my opinion.
The boxing fight scenes as I said above were greatly done. With the effects of good Dolby Surround sound system, it made the boxing fight really realistic even though we knew they were dramatized. I could hear some of the audience made some approving & excitement sound during those fights. But, I could see that the same audience were bored throughout the drama portion as could be seen by them playing handphones all those time. What people must realize is that this is a sports drama movie and not a boxing show. So there would be times where the story need to develop to give dramatic & emotional moments.
Oh btw, there were brief appearance of Brigitte Nielsen (Red Sonja, Cobra etc) and Milo Ventimiglia (Heroes TV series etc). If you had seen the previous Creed or Rocky movies, you might recognize their characters. I also waited through the end credit scene and noticed it had Dolby Atmos sound effect, but the movie shown in Indonesia did not have such effect. This film also had some nice background songs (mostly Hip Hop) and nice instrumental music. There was also that classic Rocky song if you noticed it which was nice to hear.
Overall I thought this was a good powerful heavy sports drama and the boxing fight sequence were well done (even if I personally felt too little). It had some nice reference to the previous movies and the aroma of revenge was greatly maximized in here. The director Steven Caple Jr. whom I noticed did not have a major box office movie to his credit was pretty awesome in here. Those who love sports drama movie should be able to enjoy this one. But those who only wanted to see the boxing fight scenes, I think it would be better not to see this movie, otherwise you would ruin other people's pleasure of seeing the film. You could probably just wait for the movie to be released via online streaming so you could fast forward and just go direct to those scenes, or better yet, just watch a boxing show on TV. Plenty of them around.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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