Review: Creed II (2018)

Creed II (2018)

Rated PG-13 for sports action violence, language, and a scene of sensuality

Score: 4 out of 5

Rocky IV was a cartoon. Often remembered as the point where the original Rocky films went completely off the rails, it was a movie that exemplified both the '80s and the franchise to a fault, defined by comically over-the-top villains and a protagonist who basically ends the Cold War through the strength of his values and his plucky underdog fighting spirit despite all the odds being against him. So the makers of Creed II made their jobs doubly difficult when they decided that this film was going to be a sequel to that one, having Adonis Creed face off against the son of Ivan Drago. Not only did they have to live up to the success of Creed, which serves as one of the all-time best examples of a "next generation" story in film in how it brought Rocky Balboa and his world into the modern day, they had to find a way to mine depth and nuance out of a film that actively resisted such.

But much like its titular pugilist, Creed II defied all odds and pulled off the impossible. Despite having just one too many slow stretches early on, this movie comes out swinging in how it builds great father-son dynamics between both Rocky and Adonis on one hand (more of a mentor relationship, but still) and the Dragos on the other, a film where, even though you know who to root for, both the heroes and the villains are compelling figures whose climatic matchup in the ring feels well-earned. It's easily on a par with its predecessor as one of the best films in the series and of its kind, starting slow but coming around for a knockout punch by the end.

We start with Adonis Creed winning the World Heavyweight Championship and feeling as though he's on top of the world. He proposes to his longtime girlfriend Bianca after the match, and soon settles uneasily into the good life as the champ, wondering if he really deserves what he has. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in Kiev, Ivan Drago, the man who killed Adonis' father Apollo in the ring, is training his son Viktor to follow in his footsteps as a professional boxer. Ivan's life fell into a downward spiral after he lost to Rocky Balboa, with his wife leaving him and the man barely able to show his face in Russia without being reminded of his loss, such that he and his son now work at a construction yard, the old man hoping that his son can avenge his disgrace. A shifty promoter, sensing a compelling narrative, arranges for a title fight, pitting the champ Adonis against the young and hungry Viktor. Despite the warnings of Bianca and his longtime trainer Rocky, Adonis agrees to the fight in a moment of overconfidence. Everything goes wrong from the moment the fight begins, with the only reason Adonis holds onto the belt being that Viktor was disqualified for a brutal uppercut he landed on Adonis' face after he'd already knocked him down. Badly wounded and with his faith in himself shaken, Adonis will need everybody around him to help him recover, avenge his defeat, and restore his pride, including Rocky, the son of his father's trainer Tony, his fiance Bianca (who's now pregnant, complicating matters further), and above all, himself.

While the big fight scenes are, of course, the main attraction here, the meat of the film comes in its exploration of the personal lives of its characters. At the start of the film, Adonis is in the same position that his father Apollo was in at the start of Rocky IV, one of the greatest fighters in the world and looking forward to a future as a superstar, but at the same time, he doesn't know if he's earned it. Viktor never had such luxury growing up, being raised in the depressed former USSR by a disgraced father who pushed him into a life as a fighter. Whereas Adonis is surrounded by people who love him and care about him, the only important figure in Viktor's life is Ivan, who treats him primarily as a tool to regain the respect he'd lost in his fight against Rocky. Both of these men are troubled, neither of them knowing the full depths of it until they face off in the ring, with Adonis still unflatteringly comparing himself to Apollo even after he's become the champ and Viktor's relationship with Ivan presented as abusive on Ivan's part. Ivan himself is a wreck of a man in his old age, as seen when he and Rocky stare each other down in a diner, Ivan blaming Rocky for destroying his life by humiliating him in the ring in front of his fellow countrymen. While Viktor is the man who Adonis will face in the ring, it's Ivan who serves as the film's real villain, a morally complicated figure who has grown so obsessed with redeeming himself through his son Viktor that it has poisoned the relationship they have. It's all this buildup that got me truly invested in the fights beyond just how well they were shot. Adonis wins the championship from an undefeated but aging champion in the opening scene, illustrating just how much of a formality it was for him. The first fight with Viktor starts uneventfully as Adonis is confident in victory; only in the second round, when it becomes clear that this is a disaster in the making, does the tension start to hit. When the final fight comes around, it feels like the culmination of everything that the film had been building towards, that, win or lose, both Adonis and Viktor are going to leave that ring as different men.

Make no mistake: this is a character-driven movie. Any such movie needs great performances to keep me invested, and fortunately, this movie has them. Michael B. Jordan once again proves himself to be one of the best actors of his generation at this sort of action hero role, his character's arc of rising to the top oddly mirroring his own as he became a superstar in the last three years. Sylvester Stallone's Rocky doesn't have as many places to go this time around, working primarily in service of Ivan's journey, but he too does a great job as the man who sees that Viktor is somebody who Adonis can't face the way he usually does. Tessa Thompson's Bianca offers an interesting mirror to Adonis, a musician who is going deaf doing to a degenerative hearing disorder and will one day be unable to do what she loves -- a situation that Adonis finds himself in after his first beatdown at the hands of Viktor, his body wrecked and facing a long, hard journey to recovery (done, as per Rocky tradition, through a training montage). Romanian boxer Florian "Big Nasty" Munteanu lives up to his nickname as Viktor, a towering man-mountain who was made that way by a hard life and an equally hard father, and is shown to chafe at the latter as he starts to realize how he's become a prop. Finally, we get to this film's biggest surprise, the '80s action legend Dolph Lundgren as Ivan Drago. The one-dimensional Soviet murder machine from Rocky IV returns here as one of the most interesting and nuanced characters in the film, with Lundgren doing an outstanding job conveying the hurt of Ivan's defeat and what it did to him both personally and professionally.

Without Ryan Coogler in the driver's seat like before, the reins were instead left to Steven Caple, Jr., and the resulting film isn't quite as tight as the last one. Five different people, including Stallone and Coogler, were credited with either the screenplay, the story, or the characters, and I was able to tell with how there were a couple of scenes that ran on for just a bit too long. While the film tightened up considerably towards the end, it was pretty slow-going and meandering in the first act, especially as the film took its time building to the first confrontation between Adonis and Viktor. That said, once things got moving it felt like nothing could stop it, with the fights and training scenes showing off the athleticism of both Jordan and Munteanu and the moments in between packing a more emotional punch as Adonis and Viktor grapple with their personal lives and the people around them. This movie follows the formula of a Rocky sequel to a tee, but those beats still feel earned, most notably in a finale where one character's heartbreak could be felt even from the theater's cheap seats.

The Bottom Line

Creed II carries on the legacy of the Rocky series and manages to make a good sequel to a film that, for a long time, was viewed as where it all went off the rails. Whether you're a longtime fan or have just been introduced to the series by the last film, this is still a great sports movie.