Creed II review: Wins you over by the sheer process of attrition

Even when the plotting is at its most clunky, the film never loses its raw emotional power

Dir: Steven Caple Jr; Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Dolph Lundgren, Florian Munteanu. Cert 12A, 125 mins

“The belt ain’t enough. You need a narrative,” young heavyweight Adonis Creed (Michael B Jordan) is told by a seedy promoter in the latest instalment in the Rocky series. Fighting the son of the man who killed his dad Apollo in the ring will (he is told) be his equivalent of The Rumble in the Jungle. It will make him one of those heavyweights whose name is everybody’s lips. It will give him “legacy”.

Creed II doesn’t offer any storytelling feint or combination that we haven’t seen countless times before in other Rocky or boxing movies. Every twist in the tale is signalled just as obviously as a punch from a slow-moving fighter. You see it coming. The same goes for much of the dialogue. Even so, this is an enjoyable and rousing affair that wins you over by the sheer process of attrition.

Adonis has reeled off six straight wins since the first movie and is taking his tilt at the WBC heavyweight title barely before the opening credits are over. He still has Rocky Balboa (Stallone) in his corner.

While Adonis is basking in his success and celebrity, and trying to persuade his beloved Bianca (Tessa Thompson), to marry him, a beast is rising in the east. The filmmakers cross cut between Adonis and the brutal new Ukrainian contender, Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu). Viktor’s Russian-born father and trainer, Ivan Drago (Eighties action star Dolph Lundgren), fought Apollo and Rocky way back in 1985 in Rocky IV.

Ivan is simmering with resentment over his loss to the latter – a defeat that cost him his “country”, his “respect” and his wife (Brigitte Nielsen, looking strangely Cruella De Vil-like).

America is portrayed as bright and shiny. Ukraine is grey and oppressive. The film features two bouts between Adonis and the ruthless, monstrously muscular Viktor Drago. These are captured in bloody, operatic fashion, with exaggerated sound editing, close-ups that make us feel as if we are being hit in the solar plexus ourselves, and plenty of slow-motion shots of one or other man hitting the canvas.

The film’s attitude towards boxing is ambivalent. Loved ones die in the ring. Fighters have their ribs broken, their kidneys ruptured and end up peeing blood. Even so, Adonis and his antagonist are shown to love their noble sport. Neither Bianca nor Adonis’s mum, Mary Anne Creed, are in the slightest squeamish about it either. We see them cheering him on wildly even as the ring turns into a virtual bloodbath.

Stallone’s Rocky describes himself at one stage as a “chunk of yesterday”, which sums it up very nicely. He may not be able to box any more himself but he still tries to steal all the scenes in which he appears and to squeeze as much pathos as he can from his role. He shuffles, he stutters, he pauses, he smiles with that lop-sided grin, doing anything he can to shift the attention on to him.

If a baby is being born, he will be lurking at the side of the frame, trying to steal the limelight. In the fight scenes, the camera continually cuts away to him, as if he is at least as important as the fighters. As in the first Creed, he goes to the cemetery to have rambling conversations with his long dead wife. In his porkpie hat, he looks like an older version of Popeye Doyle in The French Connection. Rocky still knows his ring craft inside out. He’s the perfect cornerman and coach. He is also an astute judge of character. Predictably, it’s only when it comes to his own private life, and the grandson he never sees, that he is stubborn and short sighted.

Between boxing bouts, the film turns into a full blown and very mushy family melodrama. It features romance, childbirth and ancient family feuds and misunderstandings.

Some of the digressions here don’t seem strictly necessary. Do we really need to spend so much time with Adonis at his desert training camp? Here, Rocky (for some reason) has the young fighter pummelling the sand with a hammer and keeping one foot inside a tyre so he can learn to fight up close. The sojourn in the desert lasts for several minutes when a short montage of a few seconds could surely have let us know that, yes, Adonis is back to tip-top shape.

The final reel showdown is in Moscow but we are shown very little of Adonis and Rocky in Russia. There is no sight seeing in the Kremlin or audience with Putin. One sporting auditorium looks much like another. Rocky is suspicious of the Russian judges and warns his fighter that he can’t rely on winning on points – but that’s as far as the suspicion of the hosts goes.

The boxing scenes, especially the epic fight that finishes the movie, are staged with tremendous verve. Young filmmaker Steven Caple Jr (who has taken over directorial duties from Ryan Coogler) uses music and clever editing to stoke up the emotions. There is a strong Oedipal undertow to the storytelling. We are reminded constantly of Rocky’s guilt about not throwing in the towel when Apollo was being beaten to death in the 1985 movie.

It is inevitable that he will have a similar decision to make about Adonis, who is like a surrogate son to him. It’s also a fair bet that the ruthless and still intimidating Ivan Drago, who wants his son to “destroy” Adonis, will eventually reveal an emotional, paternal side. Adonis, meanwhile, will have to overcome his simmering resentment and anger about the father he never knew.

Even when the plotting is at its most clunky, the film never loses its raw emotional power. Jordan (fresh from Marvel’s Black Panther) both looks credible as a boxer and manages to hint at his character’s inner torments. He may be vicious in the ring but he is a doting dad. The machismo here is balanced by scenes revealing the weaknesses of the posturing alpha male types.

There is also the sense that filmmakers behind the project (among them the venerable producer Irwin Winkler) have made so many Rocky films that they know by now precisely what works and what doesn’t, when to throw punches and when to hold back.