Rocky (1976)

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Rocky (1976)

8/10

Starring

Sylvester Stallone

Talia Shire

Carl Weathers

Burgess Meredith

Directed by John G. Avildsen

This film is written by Sylvester Stallone, who also stars in it as the title role of Rocky Balboa. It (the movie) tells the story of a rag to riches nobody fighter that gets an opportunity to shine when the world heavy fight boxing champion gave a novelty fighting chance to him and he almost took out the world heavy weight champion.

Stallone got the idea for the movie from the careers of three boxers and the name Rocky Balboa is taken from the boxer Rocky Marciano. The movie has the famous scene of Rocky Balboa (the Italian stallion) running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and a statue was done of him at the museum and due to the success of the movie, and the nice job that Stallone did in the writing had him inducted the boxing hall of fame.

The movie is excellent and exceptional, majorly due to rag to riches story of an uneducated fighter who works for a loan shark, and got a chance to take on the top fighter, a chance that he didn’t take lightly. The sub plot of Rocky’s Romance with Adrian (Talia Shire who plays Connie Corleone in The Godfather Trilogy) is one that stands out in the movie.

I forever remember how the love story grew from Rocky to Rocky II, and this movie show cases a wonderful screenplay and the movie was a sleeper hit, it cost 1.1 million to make and it went ahead to make over 225 million in the box office.

The movie is so grand that it won the Best Picture award at the 1976 Academy Awards, (it got ten Oscar nominations and went home with three, Best Picture, Best Director and Best Film Editing) the director John G. Avildsen did a great job with the script Stallone drew up.

The movie went through many changes during filming like changing Micky from being a racist to just an annoying creep. Also a fun fact is that both Stallone and Carl Weathers (Apollo Creed) suffered injuries during the last fight, the last fight was based on the boxing fight between Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner which occurred in 1975. Apollo Creed was based loosely on Ken Norton who had faced Muhammad Ali 3 times.

This movie is a classic among classics and it stands as one of the best films that Stallone ever made, my second favorite movie after First Blood (where he plays Rambo in 1982).

Go see and own this movie.