Even Stallone disowns this movie. That should tell you something right there.For the longest time, this film, despite it's problems (of which there are many), did provide an end to a long running character arc. Over the course of the whole Rocky series, a story was being told about one underdog's rise and fall, both in
the boxing ring and in life. The individual films themselves may not have always held up well, but they worked when looked at as a whole. In that reagrd, this film is okay. Then Stallone decides to make a sequel/redux version that does a lot of what this does, only far better.This film is kinda ridiculous, and I don't much care for the message it pushes that violence should be considered a primary tool for problem solving. The fight at the end, despite how over the top and ultimately pointless it is, is still well done and pretty damn entertaining. I really just don't like this film since it's a really disappointment overall. The way the story is handled is unsatisfactory, the film feels phoned in and it seems like no one really has their heart in it. It offers a change of pace by showing Rocky as a trainer nwo instead of a fighter, but that soet of thing has been handled far better both before and after this came out. I blame laziness. Since Rocky Balboa pretty much wiped the slate clean, and is a more mature, satisfying, and better version of this film's story, I don't see any reason to include it as part of the series anymore. Really. I just wish it didn't exist. If you keep it as part of the series, then you have two films in a row that have a lot of the same stuff, so it all seems pretty pointless and sad. Too bad there's no way to really keep this film from existing.
June 9, 2006
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