Always an underrated actor, Lundgren bridges the gap between the franchise’s past and present as skillfully as Stallone. Showing up unannounced at Rocky’s restaurant and noting his absence in the ringside snapshots lining the walls, he’s melancholy and menacing in ways that surpass his performance in Rocky IV without disavowing it. The mountainous Munteanu isn’t a bad actor by any means, but he’s overshadowed in his own breakthrough by Dolph Lundgren, whose cameo is the film’s clear highlight. had been shaped into a ruthless robot by his father, who’d been waiting out glasnost looking for a way to take revenge on Rocky and his camp. If the problem with “Pretty” Ricky was the lack of truly compelling characterization, Munteanu’s minimalist performance was very much by design the premise of Creed II was that Drago Jr. There’s also a welcome-and surprisingly pivotal-appearance by Florian Munteanu’s Viktor Drago. Perhaps out of a sense of occasion, Bellew isn’t the only Creed alum who shows up in Part 3. It’s telling that when Bellew made a cameo early in Creed III, I didn’t even recognize him. But because Creed is so beautifully written and acted between Jordan and Sylvester Stallone-who really did deserve an Oscar-and attentive to larger currents of social and cultural resonance, it never develops Conlan into anything more than a plot device. On a structural level, Coogler’s inversion of the original Rocky was ingenious: Instead of an arrogant, media-savvy Muhammad Ali manqué handpicking an obscure Italian palooka as a self-serving publicity stunt, we got a white champion choosing his foil exclusively on the basis of name recognition. For all its excellence as a character study of a young fighter shadowboxing his father’s legacy, Ryan Coogler’s first installment suffered slightly from the wan presence of former WBC cruiserweight champ Tony Bellew as the laddish U.K. Underwhelming opponents have unfortunately been a through line in the Creed films. The common denominator between the Rocky movies, as with the Bond universe, is that they’re usually only as good as their bad guys. There’s a lot of TV out there. We want to help: Every week, we’ll tell you the best and most urgent shows to stream so you can stay on top of the ever-expanding heap of Peak TV. We know that Donnie’s going to fight him, and we understand why, but along the way, Dame disappears from the movie’s consciousness, and the tension goes with him. The problem is that, having created a monster with realistic depth and shading, Creed III doesn’t do nearly enough with him. The real miracle of the first Creed was establishing a sense of gravitas without breaking faith with the series’ essential cheesiness, and Jordan deserves credit for continuing the balancing act here. The mid-film plot twist by which Dame goes from a grateful hanger-on in the Creed camp to a potentially dangerous rival seems melodramatic (and unlikely) until you remember that this is a franchise in which Carl Weathers was once beaten to death by Dolph Lundgren in the aftermath of a James Brown concert. Peering out from sinisterly hooded sweatshirts, he accesses layers of shame and self-effacement, defense mechanisms that Dame’s applied to disguise his rage. He’s got genuinely malevolent energy, and for the first hour or so, the story works as an odd sports-movie variation on Cape Fear, with Majors persuasively splitting the difference between James “Clubber” Lang and Max Cady. But as much as Creed III has been designed to give Jordan his big moments-including several tearful monologues and lots of cutesy shtick with his character’s daughter-it’s also been torqued as a showcase for Majors, an actor whose time is very much now. Jordan errs on the side of glossiness and also indulges in a bit of self-mythmaking a shot of Donnie ending an intense training session by dancing on a mountaintop above the Hollywood sign neatly allegorizes the star’s ascent to the top of the industry A list. In making his feature directorial debut, Michael B. To be fair, Donnie’s got a nice spread, and Creed III makes the good life look pretty darn good. The ‘Creed’ Franchise Has Stepped Out of Rocky’s Shadow at Last Jonathan Majors’s Time Is Now
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