Review #1,457: 'Creed II' (2018)

One of the many surprise pleasures of Ryan Coogler's Creed was not only its ability to find much life in what was a tired, decades-sprawling franchise, but the way it managed to add emotional weight to the events of Rocky IV, a crowd-pleasing fan-favourite that remains the cheesiest and most ridiculous entry into the series to date. While the death of Carl Weathers' Apollo Creed was shocking and unexpected, it was followed by an air-punching victory for the Italian Stallion underdog during which he also won the Cold War for the U.S., all backed to the most 80s of soundtracks. By following the early career of one of Apollo's bastard children Adonis (Michael B. Jordan), Creed added an unexpected gravity to the consequences of the former's reckless lifestyle, mixing family tragedy into what was otherwise a traditional sports movie.

With Adonis now having dealt with his personal demons over his father's neglect and untimely death, Steven Caple Jr.'s follow-up Creed II faces its own battle in keeping the young fighter's story interesting, as well as delivering an exciting boxing movie without bowing down to cliches. Having lost the fight but won the night at the climax of the previous film, Adonis has gone on to win the Heavyweight Championship and achieve global stardom with trusted old dog Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) at his side. He proposes to his girlfriend Bianca (Tessa Thompson), who is concerned that her own hearing loss may be passed down to their unborn child, and with few fighters talented enough to pose Adonis a real threat, he agonises over building a legacy worthy of his father and trainer. Ripples start to appear in his close relationships and personal drive, which only work against him when a figure from Rocky's past re-emerges with a challenge that could not only lose Creed the title, but end his career entirely.

That man is Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren), who over the years has worked tirelessly to mould his son Viktor (Florian Munteanu) into one of the most most formidable bruisers on the planet. The film begins with them exiled in Ukraine after the embarrassment of Ivan's defeat in Rocky IV, and their relationship is actually the film's most interesting aspect. Ivan hopes that by making his son the world champion his country will welcome him back, but their bond is fractured and strained as a result. It's a thread that should have been explored in more depth, since it's infinitely more interesting than Adonis awkwardly practising his proposal speech. But the melodrama is backed up with a lot of heart, and Stallone's Balboa is again the thread that ties it all together. Dealing with his own family issues on top of dreading the thought of watching another Creed die in his prime at the hands of a Drago, Stallone is magnificent, capable of delivering chills as his voice is heard for the first time off-camera. It's a step down from the electricity of Creed, but it was always going to be. For what is essentially a remake of Rocky IV, the fact that Creed II manages to be emotional, exciting and joyous despite embracing genre cliches is a monumental achievement in itself.


Directed by: Steven Caple Jr.
Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad, Dolph Lundgren, Florian Munteanu, Russell Hornsby, Wood Harris
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #993: 'Creed' (2015)

Following the better-than-expected intended closure to the Rocky franchise, Rocky Balboa (2006). series star, writer and occasional director Sylvester Stallone was talked into moving the story forward. Stallone clearly has a lot of love for his characters - his revisiting of John Rambo in 2008 and his homage to the genre that made him a star, The Expendables, clearly confirm this - so whether it was this or the energy and potential of Fruitvale Station (2013) director Ryan Coogler that persuaded him to don the trilby and rubber ball once again is a mystery. Thankfully he did though, as Stallone gives a career best performance as the ageing, sickly icon, despite being relegated to a supporting character.

Creed instead focuses on, as the title obviously suggests, the son of former world champion and Rocky Balboa's arch-nemesis-turned-best-friend Apollo Creed. Adonis (Michael B. Jordan) was illegitimate; the product of Apollo's wandering eye, and when we first meet him he's causing a ruckus at an orphanage. Boxing is in his blood, and he's taken in by Apollo's sympathetic widow, who doesn't want to see Adonis suffer the same fate as her ex-husband. Unsatisfied with taking trips to Mexico to fight illegal bouts when he's not working his dull day job, Adonis decides to relocate to Philadelphia, where he plans to convince the one man who rose from nothing to become world champion to train him, Rocky Balboa.

Rocky is naturally apprehensive at first, but Adonis' determination and charm eventually convince him, but you get the sense that he secretly longs to be back in the action once again. Rocky essentially takes over Mickey's role, played by Burgess Meredith in previous instalments, as he tries to mould Adonis into a worthy successor to his father. The overbearing similarities to the first Rocky film from 1979 is Creed's major negative - it is essentially the same film only with dirt bikes and better camerawork - but Coogler stamps his own style onto the film too, putting his own spin on familiar scenes. It also treads dangerously close to cliche, as Adonis is offered a title fight after one professional match and courts the lovely R & B singer in the apartment below (Tessa Thompson).

Yet Creed is sufficiently stirring enough to mute the flaws, with the boxing scenes captured with style and electricity (one long-take is particularly impressive), and enough genuine emotion on show to engage you with the characters. The relationship between Rocky and the brash Adonis is extremely well-written, with Stallone performing with a subtlety seen in his best work (the original Rocky and Cop Land (1997)), and he was truly robbed of an Oscar here. Only the stoniest of hearts could fail to be moved by the scenes of Rocky at his most physically and emotionally vulnerable, even if you didn't grow up with the original films. While its far from perfect, Creed is a worthy addition to the Rocky universe, with Coogler again demonstrating why he's a director to watch and Jordan proving that even Fantastic Four will not damage his rise to stardom.


Directed by: Ryan Coogler
Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #774: 'The Expendables 3' (2014)

The first two Expendables movies, though no-one would label them the next Citizen Kane, were enjoyable for what they were - daft, funny 80's throwbacks where grizzled and saggy has-been's re-lived their glory days, when a cold-blooded murder would always be rounded up by amusing quip. Sylvester Stallone put together a huge ensemble of recognisable faces; some veterans of action cinema, some relatively new to the game, and managed to wet the pants of many middle-aged action junkies by reuniting the founders of Planet Hollywood.

But they were fun and nostalgic because they were aware of how silly they were, wise enough not to take itself too seriously. The third instalment of the surprisingly continuing franchise - The Expendables 4 is set for the green light - has made the decision that macho posturing and homoerotic banter is simply not enough, and we must now somehow care for these characters and take them seriously. The trouble is, no matter how loveable some of these actors are (or were), their characters are such one-dimensional meat-heads that, apart from physically, it's hard to even tell them apart, let alone give a damn for their safety.

After the successful rescue of former Expendable Doctor Death (Wesley Snipes), the lug-head crew go straight onto their next mission to take down some warlord or other, only for the groups leader, Barney Ross (Stallone), to recognise the man as Expendable co-founder and long-thought-dead Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson). Stonebanks seemingly went dark years ago, and after he seriously wounds Caesar (Terry Crews), Ross wants revenge. Not wanting to be responsible for the deaths of his friends, Ross turns his back on the Expendables and, with the help of assassin estate agent Bonaparte (Kelsey Grammer), rounds up an all-new (and young) gang of eager mercenaries to take down the man he once called a friend.

The franchise has been growing ever more child-friendly since is started. In the UK, the first movie was an 18 certificate, the second was a 15, and this, a 12A. It's hard to figure out just who this movie is aimed at. Sure, kids with short attention spans will probably enjoy the wobbly-cammed action scenes, but the series' long-term fans, the middle-aged nostalgics, will be scratching their heads at the lack of blood and soft dialogue. It also spends far too much time focusing on Ross rounding up his new gang of indistinguishable and astonishingly dull youngsters. Only Galgo (Antonio Banderas) sticks out, and even his motor-mouthed comedy routine soon gets annoying.

Of the old-hand newcomers, Harrison Ford - replacing Bruce Willis when the latter got greedy, leading to one of the films best lines - is suitably game, but Wesley Snipes' characters is lazily written and is no more than a carbon copy of Jason Statham's Christmas (he's 'good with knives'). However, Mel Gibson, who seems to operating under the idea that if the audience is going to hate him anyway, he may as well have fun with it, is the best thing in the entire film. For such little screen time and lack of complexity, he is undeniably creepy, and director Patrick Hughes has missed a trick spending so much time away from him.

The Expendables 3 is crushingly bad. Even haters of the first, and best, film can surely appreciate it's pumped-up, old-school charm. Two films later, and the series is a bloated, confused money-maker, isolating it's original target audience and seems under the impression that as long as there's an explosion here and a cornball line there, that it can be forgiven for sheer bad writing and film student execution. Maybe it is time for Stallone, Lundgren, Schwarzenegger et al to hang up their boots and war paint and make way for the next generation. But if the charisma-free block-heads whom Stallone finds (it seems that if you can pummel a man's face in, then espionage and machine-gun operation comes naturally) are anything to go by, then maybe it's time for the entire straight-to-DVD genre to finally call it a day.


Directed by: Patrick Hughes
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mel Gibson, Wesley Snipes, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry Crews
Country: USA/France

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #537: 'First Blood' (1982)

Giving the decades action hero his (or hers) raison d'etre, John Rambo became the ultimate right-wing icon, and, through the First Blood sequels, exacerbated the one-man-army excesses that became so pervasive in action cinema. But before the hyperbole of Republican jingoism, - where the scars of the Vietnam war were refreshed and revised when Reagan, quoting from Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), stated that; "This Time We're Gonna Win" - Rambo, or more specifically, the Vietnam veteran, was persecuted in American society.

Sylvester Stallone's "John J." drifts through the American landscape searching for the remnants of his Green Beret troop, but finds despair in their absence. The veteran often came back to from the war unable to adjust to civilian life, left with the trauma of warfare, they were subjected to dehumanising abuses by the hippie generation, the middle-class students of the anti-war protesters (as Rambo says "They call us baby killers"). Rambo represents the American working class, the bottom of society, who were abused by foreign policy, trained into machines of death, and forgotten about. Unable to hold a job in the negative climate, Rambo wanders, like the Western outlaw, attempting to find his retirement. Much like the conventions of the classic American Western, the lone outsider enters a small town (not the sun blistered West, but the cold, isolated North-East), finding the antagonistic Sheriff Teasle (Brian Dennehy), who's only concern is containing the status quo.

In Rambo and Teasle there are two souls damaged by late 1960's American politics. Rambo has been reduced to an angry outsider, whilst Teasle, who clearly continued as Sheriff during the war, would have seen the United States reduced to civil disobedience. Rambo enters town with long hair, he is unwashed, and displays the stars and strips on his jacket, a flag that had lost its meaning in the hearts of men like Teasle. So when this nomadic person, a post-war hippie, drifts into his territory, he is myopic in his attempts to get rid of him. In creating this vacuity of an idealised America, the sheriff protects from the transient generation. The two characters are the different generations, and the divide between these different ideologies. They have both been trained by US authorities, and each, like the country itself, only foresees victory and survival.

The structure of First Blood is very simplistic. After being arrested and taken to the local police station, Rambo makes a spectacular escape, making his way on a motorcycle to the rocky, and heavily wooded mountains. After which Rambo is pursued as the authorities, and the audience, begin to discover his exceptional survival techniques, and he wages his own personal war against American small-town hypocrisy, including the inept national guard, made up of local hicks, too young to have any knowledge of war. Unlike the similarly themed action films that proceeded First Blood, Rambo does not actually kill anyone intentionally (Galt (Jack Starrett) falls from a helicopter after a rock hits it, only because he unfastens his seat belt), which actually adds corners to an otherwise one-dimensional character.

Rambo's final outburst of violence is directed at the buildings of the small town. The symbols of progress, and the inscrutable institution, the machine of society, of which he is a small, expendable component, a government trained killing machine. Originally to be played by Kurt Russell, Col. Trautman (Richard Crenna) is the military, the superior and trainer of this broken machine. As Rambo's only exterior relationship, he acts as his father figure. The two characters become human when sharing the screen. An often lampooned scene in First Blood is the emotional outpouring by Stallone, which is at times incomprehensible, as his character finally has a voice, but this scene is pivotal to his redemption.

Based on a 1972 novel by David Morrell, the film makers thoughtfully toned down the more extreme book. It is a competently made action film, the more ridiculous elements of the one-man-army aspects of the narrative have since been diminished by the more over-the-top action that followed. First Blood sits comfortably within the transition from '70's anti-heroes to the machine-bodies of the '80's. It looks back at Clint Eastwood and Travis Bickle, whilst moving towards a Schwarzenegger. It has muscle and explosive action, some thrilling stunts, and a squeamish scene of Rambo sewing his own gashed arm with a needle and thread. But with this comes an interesting (if slightly over the top) observation of the post-Vietnam American consciousness, the barren psychological landscape, and the harsh effects of war on the individual, what we would call Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.


Directed by: Ted Kotcheff
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Brian Dennehy
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Marc Ivamy

Review #529: 'Cobra' (1986)

"Crime is the disease. Meet the cure." So reads the tag-line for Sylvester Stallone's now cult favourite Cobra, a quote that really sums up the whole action genre of the 1980's. While America was still suffering from the demoralising and embarrassing defeat in Vietnam, audiences were calling out for all-American heroes that could kick ass again, and prove that they would stand up to any potential threats. Therefore, violent criminals were the target (as well as the Viet Cong in frequent vets-return-to-Vietnam-for-one-last-mission movies), shown as mindless thugs that needed stamping out. Enter Marion 'Cobra' Cobretti (Stallone) - tight jeans, reflective sunglasses, leather gloves, and match-in-mouth.

After a shooting spree in a shopping mall, police negotiations fail, so Cobretti steps in to take down the mad man. Before he dies, the gunman informs Cobretti that there is a new order in town, a neo-fascist group that is wiping out the weak in order for the strong and powerful to prevail. A series of gruesome murders occur, and after witnessing the group commit a murder, led by a hulking man listed simply as the Night Slasher (Brian Thompson), model Ingrid (Brigitte Nielsen) finds her life in danger. Faced with opposition from the suit upstairs Detective Monte (Andrew Robinson), Cobretti takes Ingrid into his protection, but with the suspicion of a police insider, Cobretti and his partner Gonzales (Reni Santoni) find themselves relentlessly pursued by the axe-wielding maniacs.

In the modern-day world of liberalism and grass-roots problem-solving, it's quite difficult to empathise with Cobretti's shoot first, ask questions later approach. He is really nothing more than a vigilante with a badge, without a care for the lives of others as he blows up and shoots his way through busy streets. I know this is Hollywood Action Cinema, and not to be taken as anything but mindless entertainment, but this is a direct reflection of America's right-wing attitudes of the time. Therefore the bad guys are given no character depth whatsoever, and is unclear as to what they're exactly trying to achieve (apart from standing in what looks like a warehouse banging axes together above their head).

This was popular at the Razzie Awards, picking up nominations for Worst Film and Worst Actor for Stallone, but an extremely successful box-office showed that audiences didn't care, as long as shit was getting blown up. The critical hammering it received is unfair, however, as it really isn't that bad at all. The questionable morals aside, it has some half-decent action scenes, and the film is rather nicely shot by cinematographer Ric Waite, who captures the carnage in crisp blue neon. A mainstream movie would never get away with such a ham-fisted (anti)hero in the modern age - our leads tend to be much more complex nowadays - so Cobra is an amusing reminder of the days when the answer to crime was to simply shoot at it.


Directed by: George P. Cosmatos
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Brigitte Nielsen, Reni Santoni, Brian Thompson
Country: USA

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #526: 'The Expendables 2' (2012)

Since 2006's Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone has been on a nostalgia trip, re-visiting the characters and genres that catapulted him to the A-list in the 1980's and early 90's. After his rather average yet commercially successful homage to cheesy action - 2010's The Expendables - Stallone and his crew are back, with some extra recruits and some familiar (and aged) faces from the genre. Thankfully, Stallone has passed the director's chair to Simon West, a director who has plenty of experience in blowing shit up with the ridiculous yet irresistibly enjoyable Con Air (1997). If there was a main problem with the first film, it was that Stallone's action scenes were messy and confusing, hardly akin the kung-fu-inspired action of the 1980's.

After returning from a successful mission in Nepal, new recruit Bill (Liam Hemsworth) announces his retirement at the end of the month. Shady CIA operative Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) forces group leader Barney (Stallone) into taking a mission to recover a mysterious item in a crashed plane located in Albania. The group, including Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Hale Caesar (Terry Crews), Toll Road (Randy Couture), Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), and newly appointed technical expert Maggie Chan (Yu Nan), are ambushed by international criminal Claude Vilain (Jean-Claude Van Damme) who kills Bill and flees with the retrieved item. Gradually the team uncover a plot to find a storage of plutonium left over from the Cold War, and the enslavement of a nearby town by Vilain.

Early rumours that Stallone was going for a milder tone to allow a younger audience to see and enjoy the film are quickly dashed with an opening scene full of exploding heads and CGI blood. Stallone loves his blood and explosions - that was clear from 2008's almost pornographically gory Rambo. His goal was to aim higher and bigger with the sequel, and while on a whole it is pretty much on par with the first, the scope is certainly larger and the giddy in-jokes are more outlandish and obvious. The film is certainly full of love for the genre that was so good to Stallone, and what person that grew up in the 1980's and 90's would not smile at the sight of Planet Hollywood's Stallone, Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger mowing down bad guys side-by-side?

Yet it is at times so ridiculous and self-consciously cheesy that it comes across as a parody of itself. Schwarzenegger and Willis steal each other's catch phrases ("I'll be back!"/"Yippee-kay-ya") and Stallone even cracks a Chuck Norris Facts joke, and while these are funny, it takes the edge off the action and creates a feeling that none of these characters are really going to be in any real trouble. While Mickey Rourke sadly departed the project and Jet Li only briefly appearing, the addition of Chuck Norris and an actually very impressive Van Damme certainly compensate (the latter adding to his surprisingly moving performance in JCVD (2008)). But the film is crammed with far too many characters that pushes the whole Expendables crew minus Stallone well into the background. It won't stop me watching the upcoming third instalment, but this is no more than an amusing way to kill 90 minutes - much like the films it's playing homage to.


Directed by: Simon West
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Liam Hemsworth, Chuck Norris, Bruce Willis
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #399: 'The Expendables' (2010)

Following the recent re-vists of two of his most iconic characters, John Rambo and Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone continued his oddly touching nostalgia trip to the heydey of his career with this homage to the glory days of the action film, the 1980's and the early 1990's. It was a time where anything from a kidnapped daughter to the overhauling of a military dictator could be solved by removing your upper clothes, adding a touch of oil, and finding the biggest guns you can get your hands on, and possibly the only era that would have ever allowed the likes of Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris to become movie stars. Of course, Stallone was one of the big three that formed Planet Hollywood (along with Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger) and was one of the undisputed stars of the time, but with the problem of age (and lack of acting ability) creeping up with him, Stallone's roles have become thin of late. It seemed the perfect time to remind us just why people loved him, by directing this balls-out love love letter to carnage, and, like Rocky Balboa (2006), it's actually pretty good.

The Expendables, a group of bikers and mercenaries, are sent by the mysterious 'Mr. Church' (Bruce Willis) to overthrow the dictator of Vilena. The groups' leader, Barney Ross (Stallone), and Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) travel for research, and discover that the country's dictator, General Garza (David Zayas) is merely a controlled figurehead for ex-CIA operative James Munroe (Eric Roberts). Things quickly get out of hand, but the two manage to escape amidst an array of explosions. Falling for their informer Sandra (Gisele Itie), who also happens to be Garza's daughter, Ross decides to return to finish the job, and this time taking martial artist Yin Yang (Jet Li), gun-nut Hale Caesar (Terry Crews), and bomb expert Toll Road (Randy Couture). But ex-Expendable Gunnar (Dolph Lundgren) - recently dispensed for almost hanging a captive on a previous mission and for drug use - travels to Vilena to work for Munroe.

Anyone going into this film wanting or expecting an engrossing storyline, a witty script, or anything resembling character development, will be sorely disappointed. This is 100% dedicated to gun porn, explosions, and homoerotic exchanges, precisely the thing that the early films of Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme were known and loved for. What it does have however, is a lot of heart. Stallone is undoubtedly a romantic, and he has formed a cast full of old-school action stars (Mickey Rourke has en extended cameo as Tool, and Schwarzenegger briefly appears in a scene that made me oddly giddy), as well as some of the new faces of straight-to-video, sorry, DVD (wrestler Steve Austin also appears as Munroe's head grunt Paine).

However, The Expendables seems to suffer most from the thing that noticeably plagues modern action films, and that is badly filmed and confusing action scenes. Rather than actually showing the fighting (and there are many here that deserve better, namely Jet Li), they fill the screen with a mixture of blurs, shaky hand-held camerawork, and rapid editing. It seems that Stallone thinks that as long as the audiences' eyes are busy, regardless as to whether they know what it happening, then they will be happy. And a lot of the macho talk gets quite tiresome quickly, and as token black guy Hale Caesar talks about his gun like it is a girl in that "hell ye-ha!" sort-of-way, the film came across as nothing more than a walking erection.

Yet with a film put together with such genuine heart, I found it impossible not to like, and it certainly transported me back to my childhood when the action wave was still in full flow, and I was obsessed with the likes of Commando (1985). I'm pleased that a sequel is also not far off, and the added casting of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Chuck Norris, as well as an extended role for Schwarzenegger (who now has time for acting given his political career has thankfully ended), has me obviously excited.


Directed by: Sylvester Stallone
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Eric Roberts, Dolph Lundgren, Giselle Itié, Randy Couture, David Zayas, Mickey Rourke, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, Bruce Willis
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #67: 'Over the Top' (1987)

Awww....the 1980's. A time that seems so quaint. A time when problems could be quite easily solved with muscle and sport. Just the fact of winning could bring you the girl of your dreams, the many material wealth that you could hope for. Or, in the case of Over the Top, it could win the affections of the son you abandoned ten years ago.

Stallone brings his laconic acting style to this late-80's Rocky (1976)-style tale of a working class dad who left his wife and son in undisclosed circumstances ten years previously. His ex-wife was the daughter of a very rich man (played by Robert Loggia), weirdly never to see his son again. She is, at the start of the movie, dying of heart failure. Their son, Mike (David Medenall), has been educated in a military school. Christina's (Susan Blakely) last wish is that Mike's father drive him to the hospital to see her so that they may get to know each other. So the working class trucker (Stallone) arrives at the military school to know his father. A quite founded concept considering he has not seen him for years and the fact that his grandfather (Robert Loggia) has fed him false stories about his dads misconduct.

So begins the obvious, cliche ridden tale of father-meets-son, son-hates-father, but all ends well!!

But, I have to say, this is the first time that I have watched this movie since it was released on video, either in 1987 or 1988, and I cannot say that I did not enjoy it. There is an endearing quality in the growing relationship between father and son. Maybe this is the drink talking, but I enjoyed its utterly silly machinations. The main crux of the film is pivoted on the competition that Licoln Hawk (Stallone's character) is planning to compete in in Las Vegas - a world arm wrestling competition. A very working class style of machismo, that would win the heart of any son (sic).

After the death of Christina (Mikes mother/Lincolns ex-wife), the grandfather is determined to get custody of Mike. Something which is highly likely considering the fact that he is rich, and Lincoln is utterly poor. Despite earning the trust of Mike, Lincoln is abandoned by him, and is left alone to compete in the competition. He pawns his truck (the only form of income he has) before entering, and bets all the money on himself to win, he hopes to win the $10,000.00 prize, along with the uber-smart truck on offer.

There are many inconsistencies in the film, but they fall to the side. It's a completely absurd concept, yet I found myself totally absorbed in the growing relationship between father and son. Now this is certainly not something I would have come across as I watched as an 11 year old child. Maybe age has rendered me pathetic! This was the main focus as I watched the film. I mean, we can't genuinely for one second believe the performance of Stallone; he just plays the same role he always did. The use of bad, almost incomprehensible speech, with the dour eyes and wonky mouth. But his performance is a little touching! (I just vomited in my mouth!).

Ok, so we all know the end result, even if we have not seen the film. All is well (just like in real life - ha ha). Well, anyway. Lincoln makes it to the Las Vegas competition, where there is hot competition. He is a newcomer to the event, so odds are against him.

I have to give special comment to the arm wrestling contender John Grizzly. There are snippets of interviews with some contestants who give comment. Gotta love Grizzly's one: "When I get to the table, I don't care who they are, they're my mortal enemy. I hate them". So direct. The final 'battle' (if you like), or if it were musically challenged, the montage, is the most fun part (well, of course). It's fucking stupid; but it's silly fun. As Lincoln steps up to meet the final challenge, a huge mammoth of a man. It is dubbed a competition of David and Goliath; a clear parallel to the American/Russian paradox in Rocky IV (1985), just without the political content.

Well, it's pretty obvious that the final arm wrestling match is barely about the winning of money and trucks; it is in fact the chance for Stallone to not only win the money, but the get to buy his son back from his rich granddad. Oh, how money buys you happiness! It is a kind of perfect 1980's strategy. Money buys you love - fuck the Beatles concept said the '80's. Yes it can!! Just see John Hughes' Weird Science (1985) for proof of this analogy! Haha. It is a massive shame on my general moral and ethical opinion that I actually enjoyed watching this film. I didn't even want to punch the child-actors face considerably. Now that is a novelty in any film where the kid is prominent!


Directed by: Menahem Golan
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, David Mendenhall, Robert Loggia, Susan Blakely
Country: USA

Rating: **

Marc Ivamy

Review #58: 'Capone' (1975)

Never one to be concerned with realism, historical accuracy or taste, Roger Corman took on the now legendary story of gangster Al Capone in 1975. Corman is on production duties here, but the film has his trademarks all over it. Capone (played by Ben Gazzara, a little more convincingly than Jason Robards in the enjoyable The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967)) is jailed and questioned after beating up two policemen, to be bailed out by Frankie Yale (John Cassavetes) and Johnny Torio (Harry Guardino) who hold a growing influence over the police department. Capone is then taken under Torio's wing, as they try to distribute alcohol in Prohibition-era Chicago, while trying to calm the ongoing gang wars that are getting increasingly bloody.

As stated earlier, don't expect The Godfather (1972). This is a gangsters tale, exploitation style. The film seems to want to tell Capone's story without getting bogged down in the details, and instead going for maximum entertainment value. And it does work to a certain degree - Ben Gazzara's ludicrously over-the-top performance is a lot of fun, and the fact that he's a genuinely very good actor adds a bit of class to the role. But I feel Corman's earlier gangster effort, The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (which he directed) was a lot more fun. That had a lot more going on to hold the attention, while the episodic nature of this film does get a bit repetitive after a while. Also, the majority of this film is not just a mere spin on the truth, it's outright lies. However, it's worth watching for Gazzara alone, and an early performance from Sylvester Stallone as Frank Nitti.


Directed by: Steve Carver
Starring: Ben Gazzara, Harry Guardino, Susan Blakely, Sylvester Stallone, John Cassavetes
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie