Film review: Creed III keeps the new-generation Rocky on his toes
Michael B. Jordan stars as Adonis Creed in Creed III
- Creed III
- ★★★★☆
With all due respect to the movies, the greatest boxing movie of them all is , in which we see Robert de Niro’s Rocky Marciano at his physical peak but also plumbing the depths of a post-retirement spiral down into slobbish irrelevance.
(12A) opens with Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) shuffling off into retirement as the undisputed champion of the world and into cosy domestic bliss with his wife Bianca (Tessa Thompson) and daughter Amara (Mila Davis-Kent), with some champ-nurturing coaching on the side to keep him on his toes.
But when Adonis meets his old friend Damian (Jonathan Majors), once a promising boxer but now recently released from prison after an 18-year sentence, his comfortable life is suddenly upended. Adonis owes Damian, and Damian demands a shot at the world title …
Written by Keenan Coogler and Zach Baylin, with Michael B. Jordan directing, leans heavily into the Rocky myth — when Adonis protests that Damian hasn’t earned the right to a title shot, Damian reminds his friend that he only wants the opportunity that was handed to Adonis himself, and Rocky before him.
The plot, then, is something of a retread of the classic boxing yarn, but there’s still plenty to enjoy here, and especially Jonathan Majors’ performance — as the humble ex-con who seizes his opportunity with a brutal interpretation of the sweet science, Majors invests what could easily have been a clichéd character with depth, intelligence and genuine menace.
The sequences in the ring are pretty good too, and especially when Creed and Damian go head-to-head: one scene in particular brilliantly conveys the awful, single-pointed focus of two men whose only goal is to bludgeon the other into submission.
(cinema release)
