Rocky V - 1990
If only...
If only...this film utilized the talents of its director (the director of the original, fresh off the solid though plot-swiping The Karate Kid).
If only...this movie got to the working-class roots of the original in a real and affecting way rather than hitting the right beats of the underdog tale while missing the spirit of Rocky's initial rise completely.
If only....Talia Shire didn't look like a horse in this film.
If only...Richard Gant's obnoxiously loud, entirely brazen straight Don King bootgang wasn't the most memorable part of the whole affair.
If only...the riches-to-rags side plot of Paulie signing away the Balboa family fortune to a crooked lawyer actually made real narrative sense.
If only...if only...if only.
This movie is bad, but it's not abysmally bad. And for that...it's all the more frustrating. Because I think I get what Avildsen and Stallone were trying to do, and this film has been so hated on and canceled that the needle has almost gotten pushed the other way. People are actually starting to come to its defense.
I'm not going to go that far. I think it's the worst of the series by a considerable margin. I believe that Tommy "the Gunn" is the worst villain by miles, and far too much screen time is spent on George Washington Duke rather than depicting Tommy's descent. But, I will pose this one question - If this film had stood alone and been called something else, in a world where there was no "Rocky franchise," would we despise it just as much? I truly wonder.
Being the solid critics we are, we would still note the missteps I've already cited, and more besides. Still, perhaps we'd note the little gems we found amidst the rubble as well. Perchance we would not despise the street fight at the end of the film when it doesn't stand in contradistinction to the epic ring battles of the other pictures. Maybe we'd see it a logical plot outworking of a retired fighter dealing with a spirited young fighter gone rogue.
And perhaps the family drama elements: Sage and the bullies at school, Rocky's neglect of his son, Equine Adrian's more prominent role in her husband's late-career - would be viewed as more dramatically interesting than cliched and dwarfed by the familial elements of I-IV. After all, the scene in the street between Rock and Adrian is pretty convincing as a standalone sequence.
I only pose the question. I will not render a verdict here (beyond my poor 2 star rating). There have been more conditional words - "if," "maybe," "perhaps" used and repeated in this review than any other I've penned. That, I think, is the final lasting legacy of Rocky V, the film that might have been terrific, but just WAS instead.
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