Rocky review – 50 years on Stallone’s boxer remains a gritty contender
It’s a forthright, rousingly idealistic film, wholesome in its essential patriotism, and which unselfconsciously shrugs off the boxing-movie’s gloomy generic inheritance, throwing away its grim traditional baggage of tragedy, cynicism and loss.
Key points
- Its writer and insurgent star Sylvester Stallone created the role of Rocky Balboa, a punchy heavyweight fighter just turned 30, making peanuts slugging it out with bums and….
- The actor’s triumphant breakthrough has clear ancestors in grimy tales of working-class struggle, but finds a fresh, rousing idealism Peter Farrelly’s new film I Play Rocky is about the underdog-with-heart story of how a great boxing movie got made against the odds with its plucky young untried screenwriter allowed to star.
It also doubles as a love letter to Philadelphia, the cradle of American democracy.
So here is a reissue of that 1976 film for its 50th anniversary.
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