IMDb Top 250: #220 – Rocky (1976)

250 films, 250 reviews. This is a pretty crazy idea, but who doesn’t love a challenge? Here at Cultured Vultures we’ll be counting down the IMDb Top 250 with a review for each from one of our dedicated film writers. Everything from Goodfellas to Casablanca will be covered over the next year or so for you film lovers to enjoy. You can’t say we don’t spoil you, you lovely lot. – Ashley, Project Lead

Not even Sylvester Stallone can destroy the raw, sincere appeal of Rocky. If the one thing that has kept you from watching Stallone’s breakthrough performance is an intense dislike of the action movie legend, you should reconsider. Rocky was almost immediately a hit upon its 1976 release. The thing to remember is that no one saw that coming.

It’s likely that Stallone didn’t see the success of Rocky coming either. He was just happy to make the movie as he wanted to make it. Stallone later said that he would have just as soon not sold the screenplay for Rocky at all, than sell it without the guarantee that he could play the title character. Rocky was a last shot for a struggling, virtually unknown actor. Although potentially based on the Chuck Wepner-Muhammed Ali fight from 1975 (Wepner later sued, with Stallone settling), Rocky is ultimately the story of Sylvester Stallone. The basic plot point of an aging, struggling fighter, making one last grab for success, is pretty much the story of Sylvester Stallone at that point in time. Rocky Balboa went the distance with Apollo Creed, and so did the movie itself with audiences. It was the highest grossing film of 1976, and it won three significant Oscars (Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Editing). It also made Stallone one of the most promising actors of the period. He would go to squander that potential, but that’s neither here nor there.

However you feel about the sequels, and regardless of what you think of Stallone’s later works, the purity of the first film remains intact. The dilapidated, weary surroundings of Philadelphia provide a fitting skid row backdrop for our protagonist. When we meet Rocky, he’s smoking cigarettes, sinking fast into an unremarkable career twilight, and barely capable of keeping up with a bum named Spider Rico. Yet the movie makes it clear that there is something to Rocky. We can argue about whether or not Sylvester Stallone is a good actor for days. I’ll always make the case that his performance as Rocky is pitch-perfect, right from the beginning. There are nuances and complexities to his portrayal that makes much of his later work that much more frustrating. Clearly, he’s not completely useless as an actor. It’s just that he fell into complacency and monumental ego far too soon. He’s made some good movies, but it’s a fairly small list indeed.

Rocky is one of the greatest culminations to the big end-of-the-movie payoff of all time. It starts with Rocky’s fight with Spider Rico in a church basement. It continues as we follow around a man who is so profoundly desperate for something more, he can rarely stay still. Rocky’s character and appeal are established almost instantly. When he flirts badly with Adrian at a pet shop, we like him even more. Time, failure, and a crumbling neighborhood have not finished him off completely. Yet when his name is drawn practically at random for an exhibition with the World Heavyweight Champion Apollo Creed, he balks. He doesn’t trust such an opportunity. He doesn’t know if he should take it. When he does, the tone of the movie shifts slightly.

Rocky remains an inspirational tale, but it’s not cloying or obnoxious. The natural grittiness of the film stays consistent. Rocky starts a relationship with Adrian (one of Talia Shire’s great performances), deals with his moronic, abusive friend Paulie (Burt Young, who’s also good), and gets a trainer. The developing relationship between Rocky and Mick, flawlessly played by Burgess Meredith, the old prizefighter who runs the gym Rocky trains at, remains one of the great joys of the movie. Their transition from a professional relationship that borderlines on acrimonious, to something that is almost familial, proves to be one of the many elements in the film that feels natural.

Everything in the movie is believable. Everything remains sincere, even after almost forty years. One of the best elements of the film remains Carl Weathers as Apollo Creed. For the story of Rocky Balboa to work at all, there has to be an antagonist worthy of Rocky’s aspirations in every possible way. Weathers fits the bill as Creed, creating a public sports figure who we can buy without question. Weathers is so assured as the confident, funny, intelligent Creed, we never have to see him fight. We believe he’s good enough to be the champion. We know that he’s going to underestimate Rocky at first. When that changes, when the realization sets in, we believe that Rocky will be in for the fight of his life.

Before we get to the fight, there’s that training montage. This brings us back to that culmination to the payoff that is the fight. We meet Rocky as a loser on the edge of existence. We go from there to a guy who may actually have a chance at knocking out the champion of the world. Rocky made believers out of more people than United Artists ever dreamed it could. It still makes you a believer, even if you hate Sylvester Stallone as an actor, or even if you’ve seen the movie a few dozen times. The build to that iconic training montage, set to Bill Conti’s equally famous ‘Gonna Fly Now’, is one of the most satisfying builds ever expressed in a film. As the song peaks, as Rocky leaps up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, we’re ready for the fight. Even when Rocky later quietly expresses his doubts that he can beat Creed, and simply leaves his dreams at wanting to “Go the distance”, we become believers.

It’s a little cheesy, but it never fails. The end of the movie is everything you want it to be. For my money, the only scene that’s better is when Rocky connects with the punch that stuns Creed and the world at large. It’s a punch that actor and character alike are quite literally throwing their souls into. Everything hinges on the need to connect the blow. It connects. Time stops. Time resumes. The battle continues.

Note: the IMDb Top 250 Cultured Vultures are using is based on the standings from the 16th of November. Inconsistencies may apply.