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Yo!  Creed II, after a three year wait, has arrived and fans of Creed and the ongoing Rocky series will certainly be pleased with the final product.  Its physical brutality is matched with each and every emotion presented on the screen.  You will pump your fists and get teary eyed as, yes, even legends face their own mortality and their mistakes.

Take a breath, though, hero.  Rocky (Sylvester Stallone, who also co-writes this gem) doesn’t die.  Oh, it’s coming but there’s simply too much going on in this sequel (of sorts) to Rocky IV to pollute the waters with those savage tears.  Maybe that’s Creed III’s territory, though, as this one sees the beloved icon coming face to face with his friend’s death thanks to the reemergence of Ivan “I will break you” Drago (Dolph Lungren) and his seed. 

After crashing the evening rush at Adrian’s restaurant, It seems Drago, who lost everything – including his wife (Brigitte Nielsen), who shows up in this film – when Rocky beat him.  And now, thanks to the success of Creed – who earns the heavyweight championship early on in the film – he wants his son to take Apollo’s legacy, Adonis “Donnie” Creed (Michael B. Jordan) head on.

Go ahead and accept it; the match between a natural fighter and a charging bull is not going to go well. 

This is a movie where sons must clean up after their fathers.  It is also a movie where the women, this includes Phylicia Rashad as Mary Anne Creed and a returning Tessa Thompson as hearing-challenged singer Bianca Taylor, are forced to wear their pride and show their strength in response to continued tragedy.  Remember that fight is not going to go well . . .

. . . but it gets better.  I promise.  It's not Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) bad.

Anyway, with a change in location for the montage sequence, Creed II packs a wallop when it comes to sports movies.  Does it do anything differently?  No, of course not.  But we love this characters and we love the legacy, so loving - or at least liking this one - is an easy thing to achieve. {googleads}

Lots of moments are made perfect by director Steven Caple Jr. (The Land) swift direction; even the emotion lands its punches.  He has his actors nailing the heart throughout this film.  The only time a pair of characters really feel underserved is when it comes to Lungren and his son.  Maybe some more time with the two of them could have been spent wrapping up that arc because it feels a bit hollow when, damn, it should really bring the tears home.   

With boxing as window dressing, Creed II can best be approached as a movie about relationships.  The sheer number of them, if I were to list them all out would prove to be exhausting; just know that, while you want to root for the still reigning champs in this movie, there’s a lot of baggage to navigate through first.  This baggage, as we are dealing with the burdens of legacies here, even extends to Lungren, who as most EVERYONE remembers was last seen in Rocky IV killing Apollo Creed, and his son Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu), now a raging behemoth in the boxing ring.

Creed II is the eighth movie in the Rocky franchise.  I have this feeling that it won’t be the last one.  While it is not as perfect as Ryan Coogler’s film, it is a close second, having all the right feels thanks to the strong characters and the inclusion of Lungren and even  Milo Ventimiglia, reprising his role as Rocky's son Robert.  I have to confess that, in the final few minutes of the film, seeing Rocky on yet another set of stairs while talking to family, left me more than a little misty-eyed.  

Ding! Ding! Creed II is the clear winner this holiday weekend.

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[tab title="Details"]

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sports action violence, language, and a scene of sensuality.
Runtime: 130 mins
Director: Steven Caple Jr.
Writer: Sylvester Stallone; Juel Taylor
Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson
Genre: Drama | Action | Sport
Tagline:
Memorable Movie Quote: "He's just a man... be more a man than him."
Theatrical Distributor: Annapurna Pictures
Official Site: creedthemovie.com/
Release Date: November 21, 2018
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: No details available.
Synopsis: Under the tutelage of Rocky Balboa, light heavyweight contender Adonis Creed faces off against Viktor Drago, son of Ivan Drago. {googleads}

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[tab title="Blu-ray Review"]

Blu-ray Details:

ome Video Distributor: Warner Bros.
Available on Blu-ray - Own it early on Digital on February 12, 4K Ultra HD, blu-ray and DVD on March 5.
Screen Formats: 2.40:1
Subtitles: English SDH, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish
Audio: English: Dolby Atmos-TrueHD; DTS-HD Master Audio; 5.1
Discs: Blu-ray Disc; Two-disc set (DVD)
Region Encoding: Locked to Region A

Warner Bros. gets back in the ring and hits hard with the Blu-ray + DVD + Digital 1080p release of the Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone sports thriller, Creed II.

This release pulls no punches with its attentive treatment of the subject matter that features a bright, crisp, and clean hi-def 2.40:1 transfer. In addition, the Dolby Atmos-TrueHD audio track launches an all-out assault on the ears. Rocky fans and hi-def blu-ray aficionados alike will undoubtedly go the distance to get their hands on this release from Warner Bros. It is handled about as well as any out there.

The visuals in this release are absolutely stunning with many scenes taking place in darkened arenas where deep rich blacks serve as a dense neutral backdrop to highlight cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau's bright, perfectly-saturated color palette that stands out and takes charge in nearly every frame. Pay special attention during the fight scenes as the colorful boxing trunks absolutely sing with tack-sharp crispness against the pitch-black backdrops.

Feel the Punches

There's nothing like Ludwig Göransson's soaring score to get our blood pumping as Adonis Creed heads out into the desert to begin his training regimen. The sound design also becomes a major player during the fight scenes with an all-out assault of bone-crushing punches that move about the room as the fighters bob and weave through the frame. You might find yourself ducking the blows as the fight swoops through your media room. The Atmos audio dome drops in from above as the crowd noise ramps to a frenzy during the fight scenes.

Supplements:

Commentary:

• None

Special Features:

Included on the disc is a handful of featurettes in addition to three rather lengthy deleted scenes which total more than nine minutes of footage left on the cutting room floor.

• Fathers and Sons (07:16) - Steven Caple, Jr., Dolph Lundgren and others sit down to discuss the Shakespearean theme of family (specifically fathers and sons) that runs through not only Creed II, but the entire Rocky series.
• Casting Viktor Drago (05:43) - Michael B. Jordan, the film's producer and others, do a brief sit down to talk about the process of finding and grooming actor Flourian Munteanu who plays Creed's opponent Viktor Drago in the film. Especially interesting is watching them go through the process of teaching Munteanu the choreography of fighting and how to not hit someone while being filmed throwing punches.
• The Women of Creed (05:51) - Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad and director Steven Caple Jr. giving an interview about the importance of having the presence of strong women in the film and how they are given much meatier roles than in previous Rocky films.
• The Rocky Legacy (15:01) - a rather lengthy look back at the legacy of the Rocky films and what they have meant to the film's actors, and to movie fans. It is particularly exciting to see Sylvester Stallone standing in the street out front of the house that stood in as his residence in the original Rocky films. Joining the conversation is Dolph Lundgren, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, boxing legend, Sugar Ray Leonard and others.

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