![]() ![]() “Okay, I’m gonna tell ya! You had the talent to become a good fighter, but instead of that, you become a leg-breaker to some cheap, second-rate loan shark!” Mickey snorts back at his protégé, “Ya don’t wanna know!” When Rocky presses him, the old man unleashes all the fury he can still muster: In one scene, Rocky visits the boxing gymnasium to ask Mickey why he’s been running him down for so many years. Their lines and gestures were so simply, beautifully, economically imparted that, at times, they seemed to rise to poetry. But no matter how lowly or bad, they and all the other characters in the film-even the loan shark (played by Joe Spinell)-got caught up in Rocky’s quest and ultimately redeemed themselves. Here were people taken from Stallone’s own tough childhood in South Philly, made even more real through brutally honest dialogue and poignant situations. There was Burt Young as drunken leech Paulie, Adrian’s bullying brother. There was legendary character actor Burgess Meredith in the role of his lifetime as Mickey, Rocky’s elderly, cantankerous trainer, whose fatherly devotion inspired the lowly club fighter to believe in himself. There was Talia Shire as Adrian, the painfully shy pet shop cashier and the object of Rocky’s affections. To a great extent, Rocky worked so well because of its indelibly memorable supporting cast. Rocky Balboa lives up to its tagline: ‘It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.’ The tale of the small-time pugilist and loan shark’s enforcer with the soft spot in his heart, who gets his miracle shot at the heavyweight boxing championship on America’s Bicentennial, Rocky became the unlikely winner of the 1976 Academy Award for Best Picture-and an instant classic. I was struck all over again by the masterpiece of understated, eloquent drama that Stallone and director John G. Recently, for the first time in over a decade, I watched a DVD of his original, low-budget sleeper, Rocky (1976). In the lobby, posing proudly amid my pantheon of movie gods-right there with blown-up images of heroes portrayed by John Wayne, Charlton Heston, Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, and Gregory Peck-stands Sylvester Stallone’s enduring creation: the quintessential American underdog, Rocky Balboa.įor more than thirty years, Stallone has never been given his proper due as a screenwriter. Every Friday night that devotion draws me to the services conducted at the local mission-the Mission Drive-In Theater in San Antonio, that is-where I take communion, comprised of hot-buttered popcorn and a Coca-Cola slushy. ![]() Although I’m nominally Roman Catholic, my true religion is that uniquely American art form known as motion pictures. I even sort-of liked Rocky V (1990), the one that all the film critics mock.īut that’s because I’m not a “film critic,” you see I’m a movie enthusiast. Yes, I hereby confess that I actually enjoyed all those Rocky movies with Roman numerals in their titles. MPAA Rating: PG.)Ī confession: For years, as a guilty pleasure, I haunted my local multiplex to revel repeatedly in the serial cinematic exploits of Sylvester Stallone’s most famous celluloid hero. (MGM/Columbia Pictures, 2006, Color, 102 minutes. Written and directed by Sylvester Stallone. Based on characters created by Sylvester Stallone. Benza, James Francis Kelly III, and Talia Shire. Starring Sylvester Stallone, Burt Young, Antonio Tarver, Geraldine Hughes, Milo Ventimiglia, Tony Burton, A.J.
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