Boxers get something of a bad rap with many post career ending up vacant eyed, muddle headed and barely able to string a sentence together and in that regards we’re convince that in a former life Brooklyn Beckham was an undefeated world champion at the sport. There’s none of that in Creed III the latest in the Rocky franchise spin off which for the first time has dispensed with Stallone but not to the films detriment. Returning to the title role is Michael B Jordan who makes his debut as director here and an impressive one it is too. Having taken over the reins from Ryan Coogler who produces as well as had a hand in the story.
Creed III picks up with our hero as a young teenage boy who acts as a kind of ringside sponge boy to his friend, amateur boxer Damian (to appear later in the film played by Jonathan Majors). Post boxing bout an incident with them both sees it all goes awry and their paths diverge with Damien serving a long stretch in prison his talents as a sportsman wasted while Adonis as we know goes on to sporting greatness as we pick up with him years later as he cements his reputation as the world’s best boxer in a fight against our own Tony Bellew here appearing, bizarrely, as a South African scouser. Creed retires from the sport but the sport won’t let him retire from celebrity.
We chat to the star of MMA film, ‘Huracan’
It’s not giving anything away to say that his rerun to the ring is inevitable when his old friend Damian reappears on the scene with Adonis wanting to help him out after the guilt he felt about what happened all those years ago. What Damian is wanting is to return the sport he showed so much promise and wants a shot at the world title manufactures a way into getting his chance to the detriment of Creed who by the rules of the genre will find himself forced back into the ring.
We chat with Michael Jai White about his film, ‘Take Back’
The third film in franchises are notorious for nearly always being the weak entry, Creed III is not that film. Instead it carries the mantle majestically with both Jordan and especially Majors proving excellent even though the plotting of the film is transparently obvious. It does have the usual tropes of the franchise : troubled friendships, broken loyalty, and a characters death and of course let’s not forget the training montage which here has trees being punched and jet planes being manually pulled along runways. As a director Jordan does a great job with the fights choreographed well, far better than those in the early Rocky films where our hero seemed to be bludgeoned about the head endlessly that the only hope he had of a future career would have been to seamlessly blend in as a reality show contestant. Perhaps there could have been more about Creed’s domestic life but the scenes with his signing with his deaf screen daughter are endearing. Majors is absolutely magnificent excelling as the ‘villain’ of the piece but with a proper character arc that sees him as far more than that and the actor continues to impress.
This all moves briskly along taking the audience along with it and Creed III is a punchy addition to a consistently good franchise.
Further reviews : – Creed II
Here’s the Creed III trailer…..
