2karl-
Rocky struggles in family life after his bout with Apollo Creed,while the embarrassed champ insistently goads him to accept a challenge for a rematch. this film is good but not as good as the first. I gave this one 8 out of 10 , this film is 1hr59 mins directed written and stareSylvester Stallone They've come a long way together...a boxer and a dreamer. But there is still one fight left. this is a classic fight film showinng how rocky wants to go back to noraml but has to make end meat to get by. this film is more fun as we get to know the carracters more. As we find out rocky has no eduation due to his as he tries his hand at comericals. Rocky Balboa is enjoying life. He has a lovely wife, Adrian, had a successful fight with Apollo Creed and is able to enjoy the moneyhe earned from the fight and a new endorsement deal. Unfortunately, Rocky becomes embarrassed when failing to complete an advert and ends up working in a meat packing company. He believes that he will no longer have a career as a boxer.So Rocky settles down, marries Adrian and a child comes along as well to add to the borad However soon his ability to not read well costs him his job making commercials and Rocky struggles to find another job. Elsewhere Apollo Creed is furious that so many people are criticizing him for going 15 rounds with a guy who came off that street. So Apollo wants a rematch. Rocky decides that he must fight again, which upsets Adrian due to the health risks he may face. But with adrian in hospital rocky put his life on hold his carer on hold Apollo Creed is shown more and his character is expanded the most and you get to see what he is like more. Carl Weathers does a great job with Creed in this episode and really plays the upset athlete at the media well. Paulie takes a back seat in this film for the most part but Adrian is very significant in this film as she is the main reason why Rocky is so reluctant to get back in the ring.The training that Rocky does in this film is epic. Love the training that he goes through in this film,slamming metal, chasing chickens, and hopping around with lumber on his shoulders.Rocky really works hard training in this film, my personal favorite of his films in how he trains.. The "Gonna Fly Now" song is not the same as it is in the first film. It is not sung by the same people who sang it is the first film so it is not nearly as good. However this song is only used when Rocky is running, not when he is doing his other training. They used the "Going the Distance" gets you pummped up. And ready for the actionA great sequel that is funny, further expands the story and characters, and has some really great and memorable moments. A must see and easily the second best film of the series.
Horst in Translation ([email protected])
Here we have "Rocky II", an American 2-hour film from 1979, so this one will have its 40th anniversary soon. The first Rocky won big at the Oscars and this one here is the sequel, the first of many in fact. It is once again about Sylvester Stallone, who not only wrote the script and played the title character like in the first, but even took over from the recently deceased Avildsen as director. The story continues right after the first ended, even the very same night as the two fighters are rolled out of the ring. And once more, Weathers' Apollo Creed is the main antagonist here as this film is all about a rematch from film 1. Never change a winning script may have been their idea here as you will find more parallels. Rocky is more than ever the hero for the simple, maybe underprivileged and they badly want him to win this time. But Creed will take his opponent seriously now for sure. The Oscar-nominated supporting actors are back to, even if Young's impact was really minimal. Meredith had slightly better material. And shire is back too, not just in a stable relationship with Rocky now, but even married and becoming a mother. Other than that, I had the impression they did not really know what to do with her character anymore as some of the film's weakest moments were about her like the proposal to call the kid Rocky Jr. or the rushed in coma drama honestly did not help at all. But on a more positive approach, the quote about a woman staying a woman and a man staying a man was maybe the most memorable moment of the entire film.But the film's biggest weakness, like for the first already, was the fight in the last half hour. It really is close to a negative deal breaker because it has absolutely nothing to do with real boxing. Cover (is that the word? we say "Deckung" here in Germany) and defense were completely nonexistent and honestly from the beating Rocky gets in rounds 1 and 2, it would have been over right away in reality. But here, of course the comeback happens. And don't even get me started on the synchronous falling down in round 15 (ofc!). It is highly cringeworthy and very obvious that this was actors performing a scripted confrontation. Such a pity as everything before was solid, even strong at times. The eventually positive verdict I give this movie is really only because the horrible execution in the last half hour still did not manage to destroy my curiosity who would triumph in the end. The film ends as abrupt as the first with the announcement of the winner. As for the first Rocky, that one also really struggled with the fight sequence, but had several other weaknesses too why I believe that this one we got here is certainly better than the 1976 film, which is perhaps the worst Best Picture Academy Award winner I have seen. This one here has better potential and I think if Rocky had decided not to fight in the face of the birth and his wife's critical condition (oh wait look at her miracle recovery), this film would have been even way better, a crucial character study. But I can see why they wanted the fight to happen again because many of the more simple audience members would have been disappointed with the build-up and then nothing. But these are probably also the ones who thought the fight was the best thing about the film and still think they know their stuff about boxing. Okay, drifting away now a bit. Overall, I give this first Rocky sequel a thumbs-up and recommend checking it out, even if turning it off after 90 minutes may be a wise decision and just read what happened in the final quarter.
luke-a-mcgowan
How this mighty character fell. The best part of Rocky II is the opening few minutes, which is just the final scene of Rocky. After that it takes a noticeable step downhill. Whilst Stallone is still a talented writer and actor, he seems distracted by the additional task of directing, which he is far less capable of and it impacts his work negatively. I didn't care much for Creed's sudden mood swing between the end of Rocky to the start of Rocky 2, which chronologically happens in about 20 minutes but has Creed completely change tack. Now he wants a rematch more than anything in the world. Rocky turns him down at the advice of his doctors and Adrian, who point out that a beating like he had in the first Rocky could make him go blind. Instead, Rocky proposes to Adrian (in one of the cutest scenes outside the original Rocky) and the two of them start setting up their life together. These early scenes do great justice to the Rocky-Adrian relationship I so loved in the original, and Stallone as a director is able to understand them because he created them with his writing and acting. Everything from his nervous proposal to his saying "thanks" do Adrian's "I do" is pure Rocky-Adrian delight. Whilst trying to embark on a commercial career, you can still tell that Rocky values Adrian's opinion more than anyone else's and that makes their relationship so honest and believable.Rocky runs into financial woes when he can't hold a job and turns out to be terrible with money. This was a nice plot point because too often boxing movies end with the triumph and we are left to assume so much afterwards. It also does much to push his rematch with Creed, which needed a legitimate reason on Rocky's end. During the film's best scene, when a tearful Rocky pleads Micky to let him be part of the one thing he understands, we as an audience have come full circle and are ready for Rocky to get back in the ring. However, clever writing and great work from Stallone and Meredith help us realise the gravity of Rocky's health. It's solid work.Stallone retains much of what I loved about Rocky - his low-self esteem, his disarmingly pleasant manner (his ignorance of trash talk in the press interview with Creed is almost Forrest Gump levels of innocence, but not jarring) and his thug-with-a-heart-of-gold demeanour. Talia Shire gets less to do with Adrian, because she goes through each of her plot points jerkily as Stallone the writer/director drops them in her path. Unfortunately, she also spends a large chunk of the movie in a coma, where the film really falls apart. Her refusal to give Rocky her blessing to fight Creed again is distracting for Rocky, which is subtly weaved into his training scenes that already contrast sharply with Creed's, but when she goes into a coma the film grinds to an excruciating halt. Besides one very touching bedside scene where a tearful Rocky tells her to sleep as long as she needs, the film is boring and slow while she's in her coma. We find ourselves pleading for her to just wake up already so we can get into the fight. Eventually, Adrian wakes up with all the drama of Seinfeld's The Other Side of Darkness and with probably the most hideous deus ex machina in film, has a change of heart and tells Rocky to win the fight. Then we get back to what we want: the glorious music, Stallone putting himself through hell as he trains, the big run up the Philadelphia steps (which is cheesy but utterly delightful when he's surrounded by locals). Unfortunately, the big fight is a colossal let down. Rocky is knocked down twice after taking about 50 hits to the head (so much for protecting his eyes) and shrugs it off with a "darn it". None of the punches feel real. There's no drama, because it's recycled. We don't feel Creed being worn down like he was in the first one and Rocky's continual getting up feels more like a film script than a genuine moment of triumph. When he finally knocks Creed out, I was just glad it was over.
