Creed

CREED (Ryan Coogler, 2015)

CREED’s Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan) is the product of an affair and never knew his father, so he has plenty of conflicted feelings about the man the world knew and loved as heavyweight champion boxer Apollo Creed. Rather than going by his mythological name, he prefers to be called Donnie and doesn’t trumpet his heritage. He inherited physical gifts from his father, though, although he exhibits them on the sly by fighting on the weekend in Mexico than in a recognized organization.

Donnie decides that he must follow his heart to be a boxer, so he moves from Los Angeles to Philadelphia and tracks down Apollo’s old rival and friend Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) in the hope that this other boxing legend will train him.

As the seventh film in the ROCKY series, it would stand to reason that CREED might play like a retread. Instead co-writer and director Ryan Coogler delivers a familiar but dynamic offshoot. CREED takes a comfortable position in the tradition of these underdog sports movies and builds upon it. The story beats are similar, yet as a character study of a different up-and-comer and an icon who moves from inside ring to the corner, it is surprisingly affecting. Stallone, who did not have a hand in writing a ROCKY-related film for the first time, is critical to the film’s emotional tug. Rocky isn’t the last of his kind but is the last from his circle, and in part CREED is about coming to grips with that. Stallone plays Rocky with a sadness about him. He isn’t looking to regain past glories. He misses the people who used to be around him, not the titles. Stallone wears the heartache well, revealing the soft spots inside the warrior’s body he still possesses. Coogler conveys Rocky’s melancholy with subtle touches. Paulie’s old room in Rocky’s house remains the way it was when he died. Rocky keeps a folding chair in a tree at the cemetery, a sign that he’s a regular visitor at his trainer and wife’s graves.

Although it’s inevitable that CREED will build up to a big fight, Coogler is more interesting in Donnie’s internal struggle to reconcile where he comes from and who he is. The fight is with himself, which Rocky wisely points out in a training exercise in front of a mirror. Jordan plays Donnie as someone at once confident in himself and insecure about a background over which he had no control.

The emotional beats achieve the strongest reactions, whether between fighter and trainer or Donnie and Tessa Thompson’s Bianca, a singer that he falls for. Still, the boxing scenes pack their share of thrills, especially Donnie’s first billed fight that Coogler stages in a single unbroken shot. The technique dazzles while serving a dramatic purpose of understanding what it feels like to step into the ring for a first professional fight.

Grade: A

The Expendables 2

THE EXPENDABLES 2 (Simon West, 2012)

When the stars of yesteryear lose their luster, it’s common for them to keep working and try to remain relevant by parodying themselves, sometimes to the point of debasement. The faded action heroes in THE EXPENDABLES 2 aren’t making mockeries of themselves for the general public’s amusement, but they’re toeing that line when Chuck Norris turns up essentially to play along with his own meme.

The group of mercenaries led by Sylvester Stallone’s Barney Ross are persuaded once again by CIA operative Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) to do a job for him and to include Maggie (Yu Nan), one of his own personnel, on their crew.  This time the Expendables, including Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), and newcomer Billy the Kid (Liam Hemsworth), are dispatched on a recovery mission in Albania’s Gazak Mountains.  

They retrieve the desired item but are forced to hand it over when Jean Vilaine (Jean-Claude Van Damme) and his men intercept them.  Vilaine gives them reason enough to want to hunt him down before Maggie reveals that they’ve given him a map to the hidden location of five tons of plutonium.

The makers of THE EXPENDABLES 2 can claim to have given audiences what they want.  You want action stars, you got ‘em.  In addition to the primary cast of Stallone, Statham, Lundgren, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, and young blood Hemsworth, also on hand to get their hands dirty are Willis, Norris, Van Damme, Jet Li, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Scott Adkins.  Looking for numerous action scenes?  Here you go.

At issue, though, is that most of the biggest names are present for what amount to glorified cameos.  Schwarzenegger and Willis get to do more than they did in the first film, but they’re hardly reliving their glory days in the genre.  Director Simon West doesn’t skimp on shootouts, which would be all well and good if they weren’t spatially incoherent and nonsensically cut.  A brief sequence of Jet Li battering baddies with pans is more pleasing to follow than all of the time in which shots are held for about as long as heavy artillery can fire off a few rounds.

THE EXPENDABLES 2 isn’t a parody, yet it doesn’t help its cause naming the villain Vilaine.  The oldies on the soundtrack are reminiscent of what scores erectile dysfunction pill ads.  One-liners like “rest in pieces” and “I now pronounce you man and knife” are artlessly added and overused.  The movies that many of these guys made in the 1980s and ‘90s were hardly bulletproof, but this is a cynical exercise in settling for what is expected to be passable. THE EXPENDABLES 2 doesn’t give the impression that anyone is making a serious effort, not when they can coast on nostalgia.

Grade: C-

The Expendables

THE EXPENDABLES (Sylvester Stallone, 2010)

THE EXPENDABLES combines two generations of action stars for an exponential increase in cinematic firepower. Among those joining director, co-writer, and star Sylvester Stallone are Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, and Mickey Rourke. Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger appear in cameos to set the plot in motion.

THE EXPENDABLES draws its name from the Stallone-led band of mercenaries ready to be hired by employers with deep pockets. Their latest job takes them to a South American island where the Expendables are supposed to overthrow a dictator. As might be expected, the situation on the ground doesn’t exactly conform to how it was represented to them.

THE EXPENDABLES has one foot in ‘80s action films and the other in older tough guy movies like THE DIRTY DOZEN. Computer-generated effects take a back seat to the sheer brawn of the stars and the size of the explosions. As technology has granted filmmakers the ability to make almost anything on screen believable, it’s refreshing to see a return to the basics of action movies, in which physical presence and practical effects rule the day. If only THE EXPENDABLES were a better film.

The surplus of beefy heroes and villains leaves little room for turning these types into characters worth cheering or jeering. The hodgepodge plot, dominated by standard-issue mission details, is at once straightforward and yet jumbled to the point where it’s not entirely clear what’s going on. Most importantly, the fight scenes, while plentiful, aren’t memorable in the least.

The elite guns-for-hire premise doesn’t do much on its own in a year that has also produced the aptly named THE LOSERS and the erratic but overall entertaining THE A-TEAM. Despite it’s top shelf roster of action’s biggest from yesterday and today, The Expendables are more like The Unremarkables.

Grade: D+

Rambo

RAMBO (Sylvester Stallone, 2008)

RAMBO muscles its way into theaters twenty years after Sylvester Stallone's last screen appearance as cinema's killing-est, flashbacking-est Vietnam veteran. John Rambo is now biding his time capturing snakes for a roadside attraction in rural Thailand, but it doesn't take long before he's back firing his compound bow into bad guys' eyes.

Christian missionaries from Colorado come to Rambo seeking his help in going up the river into Burma. They want to provide assistance to the Karen rebels engaged in a civil war with the Burmese army. At first he declines, but Sarah (Julie Benz), the lone female, eventually persuades him to pilot them.

An encounter with pirates doesn't deter the noble volunteers, so they forge ahead. Rambo safely delivers them to their destination, but it comes as no surprise when he receives word that the village where they were providing relief has been slaughtered. The aid workers are believed to be alive and held hostage by the military. Rambo is again employed to take some people into Burma on his boat, only this time a group of mercenaries sent to rescue his first passengers is on board.

In 2006 Stallone resurrected Rocky Balboa. As writer-director-star for RAMBO, he attempts to do the same for his 80s action hero. It's a different assignment, though. Stallone plays a character dealing with his mortality as Rocky. He occupies an ageless archetype seemingly impervious to death as Rambo. Stallone still has the physique to pull off both an aging boxer and one man army, but the former is a lot more interesting to watch than the latter.

Highly indebted to SAVING PRIVATE RYAN for its visual style in presenting combat, RAMBO is a passable action movie. The story is stripped to the basics, leaving plenty of room for the good guys, Rambo in particular, to turn the villains into something resembling the contents of a butcher's display case. RAMBO fulfills all promises when it comes to presenting carnage for the sake of it. Heads explode as easily as dropped water balloons, and mines transform their victims into a fine, bright red mist.

There's something distasteful, though, in how RAMBO uses the real life conflict in Burma to satisfy the audience's bloodlust. The film probably raises awareness of the southeastern Asian country's decades-long violence for many, but to what end does it aspire? It's unlikely that viewer response will be a letter-writing campaign to politicians about these atrocities. Lingering memories will most likely be the awesomeness of the variety of ways the Burmese soldiers are killed, not how awful that the army is doing what the film shows. (Also, I don't think you can attribute the pleasure taken in the screen revenge as wish fulfillment since the situation may be news to most seeing the film.)

Stallone opens RAMBO with news footage that graphically depicts the savagery the military unleashes upon the freedom fighters. To turn that into the background for escapist entertainment doesn't sit quite right. Qualms about RAMBO'S contextual appropriateness aside, this guns-ablazing movie works on a primal level, but stiff performances and a musty script has it firing its share of blanks too.

Grade: C+