It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over

Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone, 2006)

Sylvester Stallone’s new Rocky movie, Rocky Balboa, is an experiment in the power of sentiment. To what extent can our years of association with a character transform our experience of a movie? Can a major motion picture get by on nostalgia alone? The answer, in this case, is that yes, it can.

The original Rocky was a fairy-tale, but it was a gritty one, set in a run-down, semi-deserted Philadelphia. Like a lot of late-seventies proto-blockbusters, it paired the simple genre narrative that would define eighties blockbuster filmmaking with the realist edge of seventies New Hollywood; in doing so it got the best of both worlds. So while the story is pure fluff, the film was built on solid elements such as the performances of Stallone and his costars, and the character of its Philadelphia locations. After the founding film the series fell apart in small increments, with each instalment becoming more cartoonish, overwhelming the simple dignity of the title character. By Rocky IV, as Stallone faced off in a symbolic cold-war bout between America and Russia, the series was a joke.

And yet there’s a lot of fondness for Rocky out there. With Rocky Balboa taking the series back to its roots, it’s tempting to say that this fondness stems only from our memories of the original; the one respectable, Oscar-winning, “proper” film in the series. It’s a little more than that though – the nostalgia for the series is tied up with all the films, good and bad. The Rocky series was a mainstay for (mostly) male filmgoers of a certain age: a staple on VHS and Beta cassettes, and regularly repeated on TV back when people still watched movies on television. Even when they weren’t very good, they defined their times (Rocky IV might be the “eighties-est” movie ever made). If we’re honest, it isn’t just the moments of quality in the series that we remember fondly: it’s also the cheesy theatrics of Rocky’s opponents; the music-video training montages; Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger; Mr T; the exultant freeze-frames after Rocky’s inevitable triumphs. Throughout, even when films were terrible, there was always affection for the central character himself. The character of Rocky was always subject to indignities, and in some ways, the silliness of Rocky II through V were just another part of the trials he was subjected to.

All this sets the scene for his triumphant return in Rocky Balboa, which takes the series back to its roots. Just as the original Rocky paralleled Stallone’s own story (the unknown who came from nowhere to write and star in an Oscar winning movie), the subtext of Rocky Balboa is very much about Stallone’s comeback. Stallone was nearing sixty when the film was shot, with his career in the doldrums, and his decision to return to the series was widely laughed at. And that’s the basic plot of the film: Rocky, alone now after the death of his wife Adrian, decides to start boxing again, only to face incredulity and hostility from those around him. The central credibility problem with a man in his late fifties being taken seriously in a fight against the heavyweight champion of the world ends up structuring the whole plot: Rocky isn’t fighting for the championship this time, but is instead challenged to an exhibition match against the current champ. A subplot deals with the friendship he strikes up with a local woman (whose character appeared as a child in the original film) and her teenage son.

This unfolds in a manner that slavishly recreates the tone of the first film. The same story beats are all there: Rocky is kind and noble; Rocky is belittled and embarrassed; Rocky trains; Rocky has his moments of triumph. We still get long sequences set in working-class Philadelphia, although they function differently this time. In the original film, the run-down streets that Rocky walked were a dose of urban realism. This time, they serve a nostalgic purpose, and are contrasted with the glass and steel cityscape in which his son works. Rocky is shown as a creature out of his time, inhabiting an old-time Philadelphia almost magically preserved around him. Rocky’s outsider status isn’t as the little guy this time; it’s as the relic, a representative of a nobler age. The whole reason the current champ Mason Dixon agrees to fight him is that current champions aren’t respected in the same way that those who fought in Rocky’s day were. Rocky’s ultimate goal is not so much to win, but to uphold the reputation of an earlier era by not being embarrassed when he steps into the ring. That, ultimately, is Stallone’s challenge also.

The film works, but it isn’t great in any of the usual ways. There’s an over-familiarity, of course, that goes with the territory. Stallone is a decent director but not a very good writer, and his script alternates between clunky small talk and big speeches that resolve the drama in too emphatic a manner. Perhaps most crucially, the final fight is a little bit of a let down, with Stallone not trusting us to want to see more than three full rounds. And Stallone himself doesn’t quite look the goods: when he finally goes shirtless for the big fight, he looks like a battered, Stallone-shaped tree-stump.

None of this really matters though. What matters is that Stallone has managed to get enough of it right that he doesn’t spoil the pleasures of going back. The moments that work are predictable: the lead-up to the fight; the aftermath; and of course the inevitable trip up the stairs of the Philadelphia Art Museum, when Bill Conti’s classic theme gets one of its most strident workouts. At the end of the day, the fans are really there for these few moments of glory, and those parts of the film deliver. As the crowd chants and cheers Rocky out of the arena, it is genuinely (and surprisingly) affecting. It’s a self aggrandising and in many ways lazy film, but if you have anything invested in the Rocky series at all, Rocky Balboa will press your buttons and put a lump in your throat.