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Retrospective: Rocky III

// December 12th, 2007 // Entertainment, Movies, Reviews

You know, Sylvester Stallone has been in some crap.  Driven comes to mind immediately.  He’s also helped write crap (See same).  But for all intent and purposes, he’s managed to actually put out a number of good films, and films that go very far in appealing to male sensibilities.  It’s easy to make fun of the meathead actors of today and yesterday, but the ones who really get it and embrace it as a style, do their job very well.  Sometimes all you need is a movie that has a lot of good booms in it, you know?

Rambo is a classic example.  You can bet your ugly dog tits I’ll be at the new one.  Why?  Because Sly is old and Rambo is still Rambo.  The fact remains that Sly might be over the hill, but he is pulling off the roles in classic fashion, and the man-heart in me knows Rambo needs, nay, deserves, a conclusion.  That happened with Rocky, and it was surprisingly great. Believable?  Eh, not really, but that wasn’t the point.  The point was that a badass character can still be badass.

Pardon me if I slip up though, having both Rocky and Rambo mentioned here is bound to cause me to slip up and interchange names, so if you see one, just roll with it and laugh at me privately.  Currently, I own five of the six Rocky movies.  I haven’t bothered getting V yet, because, well…Sorry, it wasn’t that good.  The best thing to come from Rocky V was that he sold that weird-ass, damned robot that he bought Paulie in IV.  And for the sake of this blog, I am not going to consider Rocky Balboa part of the lineage.  This is only because it was produced so far apart from the rest, and was probably the best one otherwise.  So it can stand on its own.   From there, my purpose is to explain why my favorite Rocky is Rocky III.

Here’s the deal, Rocky was a great movie.  It wasn’t a boxing movie, it was a drama about a boxer’s rise to fame.  Easily the best of the six, running close with Rocky Balboa.  But that doesn’t make it my favorite.  Rocky II was a transition movie.  Obviously he had to beat Apollo Creed to move on, and that’s all that movie was there for, really.  IV was awesome because it was so clear cut. I’m not sure which had more Cold War angst in it, Rocky IV or Rambo III (aside: And isn’t watching Rambo III like eating a great big, hot, heaping bowl of bitter irony soup now?).  But face it, Apollo dies, and the Russians get beat in Russia.  That’s a powerful combo.  That movie really became the “Hulk smash,” of the Rocky line, but it worked, and I still think it’s a good flick for a boring afternoon.  V…well, you can’t win ‘em all, right?  The street brawl angle just didn’t work for me.  The point of Rocky is him fighting the good fight, not him defending his pride bare-knuckled and bankrupt in the street.

So, that leaves me at III.  My warm blanket of early 80’s cinema (not to outrank the likes of Ghostbusters though, don’t get me wrong).  There is a ton to like about this movie.  It starts the character arc on a shallower path, but loads it with moments like Mickey’s death, and Apollo taking on Rocky’s training.  That gives plenty of set up for the internal struggle that drives things along.  Better still is the cast.  You get a young as all hell Hulk Hogan in his first movie as the wrestler Thunderlips.  What is awesome here is seeing just how small Sly is.  He isn’t that big of a guy, and Hogan really is, its great juxtaposition.  That short cameo is one of my favorite performances of his after Suburban Commando.  Not for any good reason though, it’s just like “Holy crap, that’s Hulk Hogan!  Holy crap, that’s a young Hulk Hogan!”

The bread and butter is Mr. T as Clubber Lang.  Granted that Mr. T is always sort of surrounded by this hovering cloud of angry energy, he still plays an awesome and totally believable bad guy.  I think he drinks a cup of raw eggs and hate every morning to keep up appearances.  He’s like Samuel L. Jackson.  Anything with Mr. T is instantly better.  Sure, he’s no William H. Macy, but he is Mr. Farkin’ T.  His career hasn’t exactly been gilded since playing Sgt. Baracus in The A-Team, but that never seems to matter, because no matter what, you’ll always be like “Damn, it’s Mr. T!  How cool is that?”  And ol’ Sly takes him down with some style.  It’s not just a beat-him-down fight in the end, you actually get to see Rocky fight smart.  Since Clubber is such a true jerk, you really feel good seeing Mr. T go down too.

What works best for Rocky III is that it’s sort of like I and II combined into one movie.  You get both the rise and fall of Rocky all at once.  That means plenty of boxing, and no real slow points.  You get Rocky playing his A game, instead of just throwing big punches, and Carl Weathers gets an excuse to hang around.  The pacing is good and steady, something that carried over into IV.  All in all, it’s a very solid movie for what it is.  I can watch really any of the Rocky’s at any time, but this one stands apart for me.