Review: Creed II

The first Creed felt like a minor miracle, a Rocky movie that reinvented the franchise by tapping into its core greatness even as it brought the story forward into a very different world. Creed II tries something even more difficult: it sets out to redeem Rocky IV, the silliest, most over-the-top (and yet somehow not the worst) film in the series. The result has its flaws, but when it works it takes the franchise’s biggest dead weight and lifts it high over its head.

On one level the story is little more than a series of fights and training montages as Creed (Michael B Jordan) initially wins the heavyweight title against a clapped-out champ, only to find a slick boxing promoter (Russell Hornsby) has a surprise for him: Russian punching machine Viktor Drago (Florian “Big Nasty” Munteanu), son of Rocky IV's Soviet killbot Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren). Everyone wants to see Creed take on the son of the man who killed his father – everyone except Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) – but does Creed really know what he’s fighting for? 

Like a lot of Hollywood genres, the boxing movie is confined by rules so strict the differences between films - and therefore the difference between success and failure - are minor at best. So original this is not, and it doesn't always excel when it comes to the genre's strengths. The fight scenes are good but not great, and the story's predictable arc holds back the film's more interesting characters... who are pretty much everyone apart from Rocky. This is what, his eighth film? And the guy wasn't all that interesting to begin with. 

This eventually figures out a reason why Creed needs Rocky, but the film really doesn't and if this series is to have any real future Creed (who does get a handful of strong scenes with his fiance, played by Tessa Thompson) needs to be established firmly as his own man. That's not to say Rocky needs to be retired, but he definitely needs to be bumped down the roster - this film's biggest flaw is the excess of "and now, let's see what's happening with Rocky" scenes that add little to proceedings.

In contrast, this could have done with a lot more Drago, and not just because Lundgren is a more interesting actor than Stallone. Where Rocky's subplot is about family and fear of failure - because everyone's subplot here is about family and fear of failure; this really goes all in on that side of things and it's a better film for it - Drago is a character that actually did fail and it destroyed his life. 

Now he's using his son to try and regain what he's lost, only his son never had any of that and (despite being a man-mountain killing machine) is fighting for something much more pure. This may say Creed on the poster, but it's the Dragos who turn out to be this film’s bitter, beating (on others) heart.

- Anthony Morris

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