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Archive for the ‘Sylvester Stallone’ Category

Creed

17 Nov

Creed – directed by Ryan Coogler. Sportsdrama. 133 minutes Color 2015.

★★★★★

The Story: a young man whose father was a famous boxer, but killed in the ring, takes up the calling with the help of one of his father’s opponents in the ring.

~

I like boxing movies. From 134 B.C. on, I’ve seen them all. This one, of course does not rank with The Fighter with Mark Wahlberg, for that one had inside its drama something real, whereas this one has its drama something typical. It’s a type of movie: a boxing movie. It is all geared to a wrap-up, and you know by its structure what that wrap-up is to be. A ritual. And worthwhile as some rituals truly are.

Ritual or not, that doesn’t matter here because the writing is so clean and the direction so energetic and young. Just what’s needed.

It also has the big assistance of the performance of Phylicia Rashad who opens the film with a performance standard that ensures the acting that will follow will be of a noble order.

And it is met. Certainly by the beauteous Tessa Thompson who plays the young singer our hero, Creed, falls in with. And by every one around Creed, who is played by Michael B. Jordan, who played the young troublemaker in the same director’s Fruitvale Station.

What are actors made of? If you are fortunate as Jordan is, actors are made of wonderful eyes. And if ever a person was meant to be on the silver screen it is he.

He is in great shape, and his training is so horrendous, you wonder that he doesn’t give up the ring and take up acting. He’s a lovely performer, completely convincing in the madness which the climactic fight takes him through.

Opposite him is Sylvester Stallone. I’ve always found him to be an actor difficult to behold. The droopy lids. The droopy mouth.

But the one thing about him which has always dominated his acting is his love of it. And also that, no matter what he looks like, he’s meant to be there doing that.

Even as an actor always meeting his calling, I’ve stayed away from the sort of stories he’s involved with. The first Rocky was the last one I saw. He was great in it. But he is greater by far here. As the old reluctant trainer, Rocky Balboa, he gives true value in every scene; he’s fascinating to watch; you don’t quite know what he’s going to do next; or say next.

Don’t miss him. He is that rare thing, an artist in a part, at an age, in a story, where his whole life has exactly meant him to be.

 

Creed

18 Dec

Creed – directed by Ryan Coogler. Sportsdrama. 133 minutes Color 2015.

★★★★★

The Story: a young man whose father was a famous boxer, but killed in the ring, takes up the calling with the help of one of his father’s opponents in the ring.

~

I like boxing movies. From 134 B.C. on, I’ve seen them all. This one, of course does not rank with The Fighter with Mark Wahlberg, for that one had as its drama something real, whereas this one has its drama something typical. It’s a type of movie: a boxing movie. It is all geared to a wrap-up, and you know by its structure what that wrap-up is to be.

That doesn’t matter here because the writing is so clean and the direction so energetic and young. Just what’s needed.

It also has the big assistance of the performance of Phylicia Rashad who opens the film with a performance standard that ensures the acting that will follow will be of a noble order.

And it is met. Certainly by the beauteous Tessa Thompson who plays the young singer our hero, Creed, falls in with. And by every one around Creed, who is played by Michael B. Jordan, who played the young troublemaker in the same director’s Fruitvale Station. 

What are actors made of? If you are fortunate as Jordan is, actors are made of wonderful eyes. And if ever a person was meant to be on the silver screen it is he.

He is in great shape, and his training is so horrendous, you wonder that he doesn’t give up the ring and take up acting. He’s a lovely performer, completely convincing in the madness which the climactic fight takes him through.

Opposite him is Sylvester Stallone. I’ve always found him to be an actor difficult to behold. The droopy lids. The droopy mouth.

But the one thing about him which has always dominated his acting is his love of it. And also that, no matter what he looks like, he’s meant to be there doing that.

Even as an actor always meeting his calling, I’ve stayed away from the sort of stories he’s involved with. The first Rocky was the last one I saw. He was great in it. But he is greater by far here. As the old reluctant trainer, Rocky Balboa, he gives true value in every scene; he’s fascinating to watch; you don’t quite know what he’s going to do next; or say next.

Don’t miss him. He is that rare thing, an artist in a part, at an age, in a story, where his whole life has exactly meant him to be.

 

Victory

12 Feb

Victory – directed by John Huston. Action/Adventure. The Germans want to beat the British at soccer, so they enable the WW II POWs to practice for a big public game. 118 minutes Color 1981.
★★★★
What an interesting actor Sylvester Stallone is! In many ways he is marvelously equipped for his profession: he has a fine figure which he keeps in condition, he has a well-placed speaking voice, and he brings to every role a natural determination, a quality which is rarer in actors than one might suppose. In fact, this determination is the basis of his being cast in every role he plays.

He also has a visage freakishly difficult to look at, and the camera does not dwell upon it at any length, although the camera does have to dwell upon it often because he is the star. He has eyes which seem to float around in his face meaninglessly like frogs in a pond, and he has a thick-lipped mouth weak with aggression.

Surely he knows this. But he presents himself as a gutter Italian as an over-riding principle to everything else. This is not pleasing, although his purpose as an actor is not to please, but to impress. Many of his facial and emotional moves are over-the-top, but the top they are over is so low it is one’s natural request that he be dismissed as an actor. That would be a mistake.

For he presents his being and body, to the mentality of his fans, as a male not to be caged, and therefore a challenge – a challenge which can be met only in a fantasy of caging him. This makes him ideal as an action-adventure hero, unlike say, Harrison Ford, who is domestic in every way. Sylvester Stallone will not be brought low, and certainly not by the chains of good manners. He is a wild animal. He is not a very bright one, but that is scarcely the point when his wildness is so dominant, overreaching, and sure. When it is such a commodity. And certainly when he is in a prison-break movie, which this is.

I have seen him only once or twice in films and if I found him repellent that was because he reminded me of Italian boys whose bullying of me when I was a boy was so expert in its cruelty and crudeness there was no answer to it but murder. But not assassination. Stallone does not appear in serious films, but he does take his craft seriously: he took 30 pounds off his fighting weight to become limber enough to do the soccer moves the role requires.

He makes a very good stand-in for the ego of the director, John Huston, whose bushwah of personality well-accords with the arrogance of the Stallone character, an arrogance derived from no talent for soccer whatsoever. It’s the job of Michael Caine to keep Stallone off the team at the same time as he trains the team. So Stallone provides a certain comic quirk to the material just as Max Von Sydow provides a wit. The soccer games are staged by (and Stallone was trained by) the wonderful Pelé, whose unearthly skills and modest personality grace the picture at every turn.

I enjoyed the film a lot. It’s one of those action/adventure escape-from-prison movies we’ve all seen before and like to see again. This is our fifteenth chance.

 
 
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