Post by Capo on Apr 7, 2007 13:09:31 GMT
Rocky Balboa
Sylvester Stallone 2006 USA
Rocky, now widowed and owner of an Italian restaurant, wishes to take up boxing again.
A lot more subdued than what might have been expected, and all the better for it. There's no real build up to the fight, here, no oppositional adversity for the hero to overcome; instead, his demons are entirely internal, and the character seems preoccupied by how his career is now perceived by others - and so, at times, it seems Stallone too is concerned about his own career, in view of the franchise for which he is most famous. Possible routes of interest are suggested but never followed up on in any great depth: the real baddies here are those who organise the exhibition match, all in it for the money, with backstage sniggering going on about how much they're making from it. The fight itself is filmed in two styles: the introductions and first two rounds are all shot as if they are a real fight shown on pay-per-view television, with commentators, announcers, and all the expected camera angles (with a cameo from Mike Tyson at ringside), and so it is suggested that the film might finally be a comment on the state of modern boxing, all money and little heart; but thereafter it blends into an equally self-reflexive and intertextual, but very different, style, that of rapid montage, in which, with every punch absorbed, Rocky has flashbacks to other moments in the five preceding films. But it's less about the fighting, here, and more about upholding and revisiting one's own persona, fame and myth.
Sylvester Stallone 2006 USA
Rocky, now widowed and owner of an Italian restaurant, wishes to take up boxing again.
A lot more subdued than what might have been expected, and all the better for it. There's no real build up to the fight, here, no oppositional adversity for the hero to overcome; instead, his demons are entirely internal, and the character seems preoccupied by how his career is now perceived by others - and so, at times, it seems Stallone too is concerned about his own career, in view of the franchise for which he is most famous. Possible routes of interest are suggested but never followed up on in any great depth: the real baddies here are those who organise the exhibition match, all in it for the money, with backstage sniggering going on about how much they're making from it. The fight itself is filmed in two styles: the introductions and first two rounds are all shot as if they are a real fight shown on pay-per-view television, with commentators, announcers, and all the expected camera angles (with a cameo from Mike Tyson at ringside), and so it is suggested that the film might finally be a comment on the state of modern boxing, all money and little heart; but thereafter it blends into an equally self-reflexive and intertextual, but very different, style, that of rapid montage, in which, with every punch absorbed, Rocky has flashbacks to other moments in the five preceding films. But it's less about the fighting, here, and more about upholding and revisiting one's own persona, fame and myth.