Movie Review: "Creed II" Lives Up to the Legend

The champ is here.

Creed II, the sequel to 2015’s excellent Creed and the eighth overall entry in the Rocky saga, lives up to the legend, which is saying something, because, well, did you read the first part of this sentence?

Michael B. Jordan returns as Adonis Creed, son of legendary boxing world champion Apollo, who died in the ring all the way back in 1985’s Rocky IV, at the hands of Russia’s Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren).

Thirty years later, Adonis (Donnie, to his friends) is the world champ, while Drago is living in the Ukraine, where he was condemned after losing a rematch with Apollo’s trainer, Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone).

But Ivan’s done some training too, and his man-giant of a son, Viktor (Florian Munteanu), has been seemingly raised with the sole intention of restoring the proud Drago name. They make a big show of challenging Creed Jr. to a title fight, and against the wishes of an ageing Rocky—who saw how this played out so tragically the last time—Donnie accepts.

Cue the sweaty training montage. (We regret to inform you that you have walked right into a thirst trap.)

There’s no $100m purse for anyone who can guess where this is heading. In fairness, the sport of boxing doesn’t offer much variety. Someone wins. Someone loses. Over eight of these movies, we’ve seen pretty much every permutation of a two-man match-up imaginable.

However, predictability means Creed II—directed by newcomer Steven Caple Jr. and co-written by Stallone and Juel Taylor—can lean on some tried-and-true storytelling tropes and focus instead on authentic human moments (even for the Dragos). That, and delivering endorphin rushes with cinema’s most rousing and motivating montages. Composer Ludwig Göransson delays—and then delivers—gratification on his end too, holding out on Bill Conti’s iconic Rocky trumpets until the film’s final scenes. When they arrive: oh yeah, that's the good stuff.

It’s a broader flick than the Ryan Coogler-directed Creed, in the same way that Rocky II was more of a broad crowd-pleaser than the sparse Rocky. And cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau doesn’t attempt the same athletic camerawork of Maryse Alberti, who turned Creed's boxing matches into immersive, unblinking marathons of ducking and weaving.

Nonetheless, Morgenthau has us experience each body blow, and we’re made to care for and fear for Donnie, which is not a feeling I’ve ever had for any recent boxing world champion contenders. It helps having a sensitive and emotionally astute actor like Jordan—who, it should be noted, remains a rig—in the lead, wrestling with daddy (and zaddy) issues. This Creed also has more Tessa Thompson, which is always the correct amount of Tessa Thompson. She plays Bianca, Donnie's slowly-going-deaf musician girlfriend. Their heartbreaking developments take center stage, as Rocky, rightly, recedes to the background.

Sure, Stallone is still a sweetly inarticulate presence, but there’s less for him to do here, and so much yet for Donny to accomplish, in Creed III and beyond. Clubber Lang Jr. is calling, right?

4/5

In Australian cinemas now. Rated M for violence.