Review: Rocky V

After getting a win over robotic Russian Ivan Drago, Rocky Balboa (Sly Stallone) is in rough shape, even suffering a bit of brain damage. His doctors and wife Adrian (Talia Shire) pretty much force Rocky into retirement, otherwise risking further damage to his brain. However, loudmouth promoter George Washington Duke (Richard Gant) tries to goad him into taking on his fighter Union Cane (Michael Williams). Since some dodgy accountant activity has left Rocky bankrupt (Burt Young’s Uncle Paulie is at fault, of course), he really could use the money, but nonetheless Rocky holds true to his promise to stay retired and focus on family. Enter Oklahoma good ‘ol boy Tommy Gunn (Tommy Morrison), who hounds Rocky to get him to train him, with Rocky not feeling like the well-meaning hot-head is worth the trouble. However, the kid is persistent, and pretty soon Rocky is making like his departed mentor Mickey (Burgess Meredith, in ghostly flashbacks) training the dumb pug. Rocky is also neglecting his own son Rocky Jr. (Stallone’s own son Sage), who is having a hard time with bullies at his new school. Tony Burton has a lively cameo at the start as Rocky’s “Rocky IV” trainer Duke, and a young Kevin Connolly is hilariously cast as Rocky’s Jr.’s young tormentor Chickie, in one of his first roles.

 

Although I’m sure he’s going off commercial/critical failure to an extent, even writer-star Sly Stallone thinks this 1990 sequel is crap and ironically only made it out of greed (It’s the only “Rocky” film to have lost money at the box-office!). Directed by the original “Rocky” director John G. Avildsen (who also directed the excellent youthful “Rocky” variant “The Karate Kid”), this one seems to want to make a different kind of “Rocky” movie, but it would take the Ryan Coogler directed spin-off “Creed” in 2015 to really do what this film tries for and fails.

 

The film particularly suffers from pacing, as the first 40 minutes is agonisingly slow, so that the rest has to rush and ultimately comes off as melodramatic. The final 30 minutes in particular, are an unmitigated disaster, and tellingly the part of the film that least resembles the later “Creed”. It’s beyond silly and torpedoes the previously dumb-but-amiable Tommy Gunn for the sake of making a point about Don King, celebrity athletes, and corruption/ruthless pursuit of fame and money. If the film told any of this in any kind of effective and interesting manner, that would be fine. But Avildsen and Stallone don’t come close and completely foul it up in the finale.

 

It starts well, as it focuses on Rocky’s deteriorating health after beating Ivan Drago in “Rocky IV”. It’s actually quite sad stuff. We also get an hilarious and adorable scene between Rocky and Rocky Jr. (played by Stallone’s late son Sage) right before bedtime. I liked that, and I generally liked Sly’s performance in the film, it’s certainly better than his turn in “Rocky IV”. Stallone gives us Rocky Balboa The Man, back again, instead of Rocky Balboa: Defender of American Superiority that we got in “Rocky IV: Fuck You, Commie Pinkos!”. Some of this personal/character stuff worked for me, outside of Rocky Jr.’s dorky school bully problems, perhaps and Talia Shire. Did we really need a subplot of Rocky Jr. being robbed of his lunch money? No we fucking did not, though young Sage Stallone tries his best under very trying circumstances. Talia Shire has visibly aged between “Rocky IV” and this one, but it’s not that big of a deal. What is unfortunately problematic is that for me it appears that Shire’s headspace here seems occupied by Connie Corleone, not Adrian Balboa. This is a completely different, far more strident and confident Adrian. In theory, that’s not a terrible idea, but Shire takes it too far to the point where the character is barely recognisable. Burt Young is better employed here as lousy Uncle Paulie than the previous film, no dopey robot maid in this one, thankfully.

 

I’m not sure Avildsen needed to bring on Burgess Meredith to reprise the role of trainer Mickey (who died two films prior, for cryin’ out loud) for flashback scenes. Meredith, predictably gives the best performance in the damn film by far, but why not just use actual footage from the previous films to do the same damn job here? But for me, the film really starts to take a nosedive once the Don King-inspired promoter George Washington Duke (Richard Gant) and hayseed ‘Tommy Gunn’ (Tommy Morrison) figure into things. Avildsen took a gamble on real-life boxer Tommy Morrison here, and boy did that gamble not pay off (Google the late Morrison if you want to get real depressed. Let’s just say, things didn’t go well for him after a hot start, and he died in 2013). He’s dull and has less than zero charisma, though to be fair it’s partly Stallone’s fault for introducing the character so late into the script. It’s 40 minutes into a less than 100 minute film before the main boxer turns up! The character is a bore at first, and eventually becomes an unlikeable bore once screenwriter Stallone basically commits unnecessary character assassination on him in ridiculously quick fashion. The shift isn’t remotely plausible, comes out of nowhere, and is at the service of a point that has been made extremely superficially at best. Robert Gant is OK as the wannabe Don King, and I guess King-Tyson is a natural progression after we basically got a forerunner to Tyson in Mr. T’s Clubber Lang in “Rocky III”, but it’s done very superficially here in a film that tries for heavy drama at other times (Former Heavyweight boxer Michael Williams as the Tyson-esque Union Kane even lisps like Tyson. He also, hilariously looks like comedian Wayne Brady, I might add). The result is a tonally out-of-whack film that likely won’t satisfy anyone. Hell, even the score by Bill Conti (“Rocky”) is barely noticeable, and far from the man’s best work.

 

It’s hardly one of the worst films of all-time, but it is dull, poorly written, and easily the worst in the series. There’s some interesting elements early on to do with Rocky himself, but it’s at the detriment of the boxing story. This results in a rushed second half with superficial Don King-inspired nonsense, and a truly and embarrassingly ludicrous finale (a street fight choreographed by hardcore wrestling legend Terry Funk) that no one should’ve allowed to be filmed, let alone seen by anyone. 

 

Rating: C-