Rocky II (1979)

Genre

Drama | Sport

Director

Sylvester Stallone

Country

USA

Cast

Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Carl Weathers, Burgess Meredith, Tony Burton, Sylvia Meals, Seargeoh Stallone, Joe Spinell, Paul J. Micale, Jeff Temkin

Storyline

After the match with Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) is enjoying his life with Adrian (Talia Shire). Unfortuntately, he becomes embarrassed when failing to complete an advert and accept the challenge for a rematch to clear his name.

Opinion

"Rocky" was a fantastic film. Not just a sport film, but a great character study, but because of how things went with Rambo, I was expecting a change of direction in this series as well. Not literally, because of course that happened. What I mean is that I was expecting just a film about boxing. But Stallone proved me wrong as "Rocky II" isn't just that, but it's a worthy sequel whose strength, once again, lies in its characters.

Although it wasn't a story that needed to be continued, Stallone really did a good job continuing it. I do realise it's basically the same exact story, with a few different events and a different outcome, but it flows very nicely. Also the decline of Rocky after the match with Creed and the whole Adrian and baby thing are well handled, without being too sloppy or overly sentimental.

But that's not the reason the film succeeds, the credits for that go to the characters. And of course Stallone for writing them. Like I said before, I wasn't expecting a further development, but that's what this film has to offer. It still focuses on those few characters from the first film, and allows us to get to know them better. Okay, maybe Paulie takes a back seat and he is not a strong character like in the previous film, but on the other hand it's shown more of Apollo Creed.

Fans of the sport genre will definitely enjoy this film thank to the final fight, which is longer and slightly more exciting than the previous one.

With "Rocky II" you will still enjoy Bill Conti's phenomenal musical score and solid performances from the cast, from Sylvester Stallone playing a 'softer' version of Rocky, to Burgess Meredith as Mickey, Rocky's manager, to Talia Shire who doesn't have much to do but still does a good job.