Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.5

Creed Blu-ray Movie Review

Fathers and Sons

Reviewed by Michael Reuben February 29, 2016

Ryan Coogler wasn't even born when Sylvester Stallone first brought Rocky Balboa to the screen, but in Coogler's remarkable Creed, the sophomore writer/director and the aging superstar lock arms across four decades to remind audiences why Rocky has been a cherished icon since he first sprinted up the stone steps to Philadelphia's Museum of Art. At the time, Rocky wanted nothing more than to prove he wasn't "just another bum from the neighborhood" by surviving twelve rounds in an exhibition boxing match with the world heavyweight champion. Having accomplished the goal, the underdog boxer kept proving his worth to himself and the world, but in Creed he faces a different challenge: that of passing the torch to a younger man in whom Rocky recognizes the same urgent desire to become more than he is. That the young man happens to be the son of Rocky's former rival and friend, Apollo Creed, only adds to the sense of destiny knocking.

Creed is pervaded by ghosts, and the spirit of Apollo Creed, who died in the ring in Rocky IV, is only the most obvious. The ghosts of Rocky's own past surround him, whether in pictures on the wall at Adrian's Restaurant, in posters of his former self at Mighty Mick's Boxing gym, or even the bronze statue at the top of the Rocky Steps, where tourists pose for photographs. Coogler floods the frame with such images, letting them work both as inspiration to the characters and as a reminder to the audience of the striving spirit that Rocky has represented for generations of viewers. Even as the erstwhile Italian Stallion battles age and ill health, his own past keeps calling him back into the fray. Resigned to having been beaten by time (the only contender, as he says, that is "undefeated"), the old man finds that his skills are still needed, but now in a different capacity, as a coach and father figure to the young fighter in whom he can see both himself and the opponent who first prodded the young Rocky to exceed his circumstances. Creed not only continues the Rocky franchise; it reinvents it with an emotional ferocity not seen since the original film.

Creed finds Rocky Balboa (Stallone) literally sitting in a graveyard waiting to die, while he converses with the spirits of wife Adrian and brother-in-law Paulie. Though he remains a familiar and beloved figure in his native town, Rocky is a man alone and, at least on the surface, at peace with fading quietly from the scene. All of that changes with the arrival of Adonis "Donnie" Johnson (Michael B. Jordan), a scrapping product of foster care and juvenile homes, who learned when he was twelve that he is the illegitimate son of former heavyweight champion Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers, in photos and flashbacks). Born after Creed's death, the boy (played by Alex Henderson) lost his mother at an early age, but Creed's widow, Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad), tracked him down, adopted and raised him. (Rashad, with limited screen time and minimal dialogue, manages the extraordinary feat of conveying the entire emotional obstacle course that Mary Anne's generosity required her to travel.) Having been raised by Mary Anne to aspire to a better life, the young Adonis becomes obsessed with his father's career and legacy and, rejecting a cushy desk job, he leaves Los Angeles to pursue a boxing career. Seeking connection with the father he never knew, Adonis asks Rocky to train him.

Coogler's film closely tracks Stallone's original script for Rocky by maneuvering Adonis into an exhibition match (on HBO) against world lightweight champion "Pretty" Ricky Conlan (Tony Bellew), a bruiser from Liverpool, whose legal troubles are threatening his career and whose manager (Graham McTavish) sees a match against the son of Apollo Creed as a golden opportunity. But the true drama of Creed isn't the fight with Conlan. It's the effort by Adonis and Rocky to reach out to each other across the years that separate them, each alone in his own world, to form an unlikely family (the word occurs frequently in Creed). The barriers are formidable, but the need is intense, and the push/pull between the young fighter and his reluctant mentor challenges both of them in ways that neither could have anticipated. The violence of the ring is nothing compared to the emotional furor when these two clash.

Just like the young Rocky, Adonis has his Adrian, in the person of Bianca (Tessa Thompson), a singer who is as ambitious in her own pursuits as Adonis in his. It wasn't until Rocky III that Talia Shire's Adrian showed the steel at her core, but Thompson gives Bianca a tough worldliness that both challenges and supports Adonis. (She's the one who ultimately persuades him to adopt his father's name.)

Stallone gives the performance of his career, his every line and gesture conveying both the wisdom and the weariness of a man whom life has taken on a long and arduous path. Routinely questioning whether he has it in him to fight another battle, or even to train someone else for it, Stallone's Rocky becomes the embodiment of the very endurance he is trying to teach Adonis, which is simply the determination to keep moving forward, "one step at a time, one punch at a time, one round at a time". In a much replayed scene, Rocky points to the young fighter's reflection in a mirror and tells him: "That's the toughest opponent you're ever going to have to face." By the time Adonis enters the ring in Liverpool, Rocky has had to relearn that lesson himself, and it's what allows him, by the film's end, to stand side by side with the surrogate son who reawakened his fighting spirit, again at the top of the steps and no longer in the graveyard.

Creed Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Creed was shot digitally (on the Arri Alexa, according to IMDb) by Maryse Alberti, whose major work has been in documentaries and who created the "found video" look for M. Night Shyamalan's The Visit. (She also shot Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler.) Probably because of her documentary background, Alberti has resisted the temptation to stylize Creed by tinting the entire frame with washes of color, which has become an all-too-common practice in contemporary cinematography. Creed features a widely varying and generally realistic palette that accommodates both the wintry urban landscape of Philadelphia and the pockets of bright warmth seen in Bianca's apartment, in the clubs where she performs and also in Rocky's home, after Adonis moves in and the champ's emotional pilot light is relit. Each of Adonis' four fights was shot in a different style, with the climactic final fight aping the style of cable TV coverage and dominated by the red, white and blue of the challenger's trunks, which pay tribute to his famous father.

Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray features an exceptional image that preserves the Alexa's clarity and sharpness without any of the harshness that sometimes accompanies digital capture. The crags and lines in Stallone's face add gravitas to his performance, and they are complemented by detail of the old walls, worn exteriors and cracked concrete in the Philadelphia locations. The crisp digital imagery allows Alberti and Coogler to fill locations like Rocky's restaurant and Mick's Gym with photos and memorabilia invoking Rocky's past, which serve both as reminders of Creed's immense backstory and as silent witnesses of this latest chapter. In the fight scenes, blood, sweat and injuries are displayed with painful realism.

The only quibble with Warner's presentation is the continued insistence of the studio's theatrical division on aiming for a middling video bitrate, regardless of the available space (a practice now abandoned by the catalog division, following the Warner Archive Collection's example). The digitally acquired Creed has been mastered at an average bitrate of 24.99 Mbps with what appears to be a careful job of compression, but about 10 GB remain unused and wasted on the BD-50.

Creed Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Creed arrives with a 7.1 soundtrack encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, and the sound mixers have been bold in their use of the surround array. When Adonis is fighting in the ring, Rocky's instructions are a constant presence, frequently off-camera and routed to a rear or side speaker and moving with the camera's perspective. The crowd noises, especially in the climactic bout, help convey the excitement, and the commentary of the sports reporters has been expertly blended into the mix so that it almost sounds like an ongoing dialogue within the fight itself. In Adonis' training scenes, his environment routinely surrounds the listener, whether it's other boxers training nearby or fans on motorcycles accompanying him on a run. The soundtrack has excellent dynamic range, with deep bass extension used sparingly but effectively. Ludwig Göransson, who scored Fruitvale Station for director Coogler, supplied the alternately energetic and emotional score, which chooses just the right moment to invoke Bill Conti's signature Rocky theme. The track is liberally salted with enough pop and hip-hop songs to fill an album, which was released simultaneously with the film. These provide an interesting contrast with Bianca's bluesy numbers, which were also composed by Göransson and co-written and sung by Tessa Thompson.

Creed Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Know the Past, Own the Future (1080p; 1.78:1; 14:49): A wide selection of interviewees, including Stallone, Jordan and Coogler, review Rocky's history as both character and icon and discuss the transition from Rocky's story to Adonis Creed's.



• Becoming Adonis (1080p; 1.78:1; 5:46): This featurette reviews the year-long training regimen required to transform Jordan into a champion boxer.



• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1; 19:36): The eleven scenes are not separately listed or selectable. They are all interesting, but it's easy to see why they were cut, e.g., Adonis visiting his father's trophy room for a last look before leaving L.A., Rocky watching old VHS tapes of his fights or the bus ride that precedes the first "date" of Adonis and Tessa. These are all the type of scene that makes sense on the page but turns out to be unnecessary once the film is cut together.



• Bonus Trailer: The film's trailer is not included. At startup, the disc plays a trailer for Barbershop 3, followed by the usual Warner promo for digital copies.

Creed Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A sequel to Creed has already been announced, and it's not hard to imagine possibilities for continuing Adonis' story, but a subsequent chapter will be hard-pressed to replicate Creed's intensity. Both Rocky and his creator had to be convinced by younger men they had inspired that they still had work to do. The thrill of those twin discoveries blazes through the screen, fired even more by the younger men's joy at connecting with their pasts. Highest recommendation.