Tag: Burt Young

Rocky (1976, John G. Avildsen)

By the time Rocky gets to the big fight, you forget there’s actually going to be a big fight. While the film does open with a boxing match, until somewhere decidedly in the late second act, Rocky isn’t a sports movie. It’s a character study of a boxer, sure, but he’s not in a sports movie. He doesn’t have another fight lined up anyway.

The film starts just before Thanksgiving and ends on New Year’s Day. Holidays aren’t important to Rocky (screenwriter, leading man, and fight choreographer Sylvester Stallone), who’s seemingly been alone for a decade. He’s thirty now, breaking legs for a two-bit loan shark (an oddly touching Joe Spinell), getting occasional fights, winning over half of them, and putting up with his gym owner (Burgess Meredith, mostly saving MAD Magazine time on the caricature) treating him like crap because he’s too old to be a contender.

After the first scene, Rocky’s done with boxing for the first act. There’s talk about it—folks being surprised Stallone won the fight—but the rest of the time is establishing the ground situation. Stallone’s got a crush on pet shop girl Talia Shire, who’s not necessarily not interested in the attention, and he’s best buddies with her drunken “lovable” asshole brother (Burt Young). Young wants a job as a leg-breaker, but Stallone doesn’t think he’s reliable enough. Into the second act, there’s a big implication Young’s trying to pawn Shire off on Stallone in exchange for a job hookup.

Young’s an asshole. They realize in the third act they can make him funny about it and give him some goofy reaction shots during the big fight, but it’s too late. It’s fine. He’s supposed to be an asshole, but he and Stallone’s arc is one of the film’s most rushed.

Just as Stallone and Shire kick off their tender but macho romance, he gets the chance of the lifetime. The world heavyweight champion of the world Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) is looking for an unknown contender for a New Year’s Day fight. Weathers is celebrating the United States Bicentennial, wants to do something showy. Giving the underdog a shot. Now, we’ll find out later Weathers has not just never lost a fight, he’s never even been knocked down. Rocky has plenty of opportunities to exposition dump about Weathers’s record (the film does use TV news footage as a device, but Shire knows squat about boxing, and Stallone could tell her). Stallone’s a fan of Weathers, but it seems uninformed. In one of Rocky’s sincerest flexes, Stallone pushes back at his regular bartender Don Sherman’s regular racism about Black man Weathers. It’s also one of the most realistic—Stallone doesn’t say why he’s upset Sherman’s a racist and just bounces.

There’s a decent argument for Stallone not knowing how to verbalize it. He’s something of an uninformed philosopher king, lots of observations—he even writes jokes to tell Shire—and Rocky’s most shining moments are when Stallone ventures out into the world. He leaves the gym, the fight club, the bar, his “economically distressed” neighborhood, and participates in the world. Rocky will have several problems by the end, up to and including the last moments, but once it rings the bell in Stallone’s self-esteem character development arc, the movie’s basically won. It’s done the Stallone arc, it’s done the Stallone and Shire arc, it’s given Shire just the scantest amount of character moments on her own (it’s truly staggering how much the film puts on her; she’s charged with bringing it legitimacy). Like the rest of the film, the big fight’s got its problems (Stallone’s got a strategy, a foreshadowed strategy, but they make it coincidental), and its moments (despite uneven sound editing, Stallone and Weathers do have a real scene together amid the blows).

Technically, the film’s a sparsely mixed bag. Whenever director Avildsen actually has a good shot (he’s awful shooting in cramped spaces, which is about half of the movie), cinematographer James Crabe or one of his camera operators messes it up. There are some decent shots throughout the film, but they’re either outside, involve static camera placement, or in giant indoor spaces. Otherwise, it’s buyer beware. Richard Halsey and Scott Conrad’s editing is similarly hot and cold. It’s good for the sports movie, it’s atrocious on the dramatics. Young in particular will change head position and facial expression between his shots. Is it Young, is it Avildsen? Probably. But it’s also artless cutting.

Then the sports stuff is good.

Bill Conti’s score is one of the main stars, along with Stallone, Shire, and, to a lesser extent, Weathers. Weathers gives an unforgettable performance, but… he’s not, you know, particularly good. Stallone and Shire are good. Especially Shire. The supporting cast ranges. Meredith’s cartoonish and semi-pointless (it’s like no one told Stallone after he figured out the plot, he could improve it) until the movie remembers to tell us Meredith could’ve been a surrogate family to Stallone but didn’t because he’s an asshole too. One of the film’s other endearing subplots is Stallone’s good nature—his “friends” all want something from him, which he acknowledges and, once in the position to help, does so.

Except Shire, of course, which just makes them all the cuter. Though Stallone’s pushy advances age poorly (maybe if Avildsen directed them better), but Shire’s into it, so it’s fine… see what you made me say, movie? Do you see?

Anyway.

The film’s greatest unsung performance is Tony Burton. He’s Weathers’s trainer, who realizes Stallone might be good enough to get lucky, and Weathers better take the big fight more seriously. Weathers, spoiler, does not. Hence drama.

Thayer David plays Weathers’s Mr. Big manager. He and Meredith unfortunately don’t get a chance to do a caricature-off.

A shame we’ll never get to see it—the movie reminds everyone at least four times there won’t be a rematch.

Rocky IV (1985, Sylvester Stallone), the director’s cut

Sylvester Stallone’s director’s cut of Rocky IV arrives four sequels and thirty-five years after the film’s original release. Stallone says it’s for the thirty-fifth anniversary; Robert Doornick (who voiced Burt Young’s robot in the original cut and owns the copyright on the robot) says it’s because Stallone didn’t want to renew with him and had to cut out all the robot scenes.

So, if “Rocky vs. Drago” replaces the original cut in streaming services… we’ll find out.

There are some other changes to the movie besides the goofy robot being gone, like a trimmed-down version of Rocky III tacked onto the beginning. It’s weird because it goes on way too long and isn’t a good encapsulation of the film–it also emphasizes Stallone’s relationship with Carl Weathers to enlarge their relationship in the Rocky IV footage. Only there’s no actual echoing between the two. Because Stallone doesn’t change Rocky IV’s story or its beats, he just excises a few of them. He doesn’t do anything to fix the problems, which are obviously insurmountable because it’s fairly terrible.

Stallone’s writing, direction, John W. Wheeler, and Don Zimmerman’s editing are all quite bad. There’s no new editor credited with the Rocky vs. Drago cuts, but whoever did Final Cut Proing or Adobe Premiering doesn’t have much in the way of timing. Though, since this version comes after Creed II, which is a sequel to this film, bringing back Dolph Lundgren decades later, you could almost read something into how Lundgren’s cut to see if it implies character development. Only it doesn’t. And Rocky vs. Drago isn’t like cut to tie into Creed II. Stallone’s just cobbling something together here—does anyone believe he didn’t have the full director’s cut of the original in 1985, with that craptacular “We Can All Change” speech to the Soviet people, who embrace Rocky over Gorby? So why not tie into Rocky V. Nothing would be better than seeing all the stupid patriotism end with Stallone brain-damaged. It’d explain his final speech.

The movie also misses out on soundtrack revising, which… I mean, why not. Something to juice it up.

Also, that last fight is poorly done, especially after seeing Stallone learn how to direct action in the intervening decades since he shot this film. It’s not exactly any more embarrassing than the original Rocky IV, but it’s definitely pointless.

Especially since it’s all about Stallone, Weathers, and Lundgren all basically just being toxically masculine narcissists. It might be a little different for Stallone and Lundgren—because Weather’s hubris literally gets him killed, which doesn’t not have a racial component to it. Like, Weather is openly Black here. Bad dad. Stallone’s a bad dad too. Stallone made movies about these guys being bad dads. It’s such a weak revisit.

Maybe I’m just embarrassed I thought it might be any different, like Stallone might’ve actually tried. Because even with the miserable mise-en-scène of Rocky IV, there are obvious places you could just cut it better if you had access to the footage.

Finally, because I can’t any more with the rest of it, does Talia Shire come off as miserable in the original version? Like she’s raising a son and then tending a douchebag husband? Not to mention Young.

Oh, okay, this bit is the last—Young. Stallone stops playing him for laughs but keeps the pratfalls, which just makes him seem like a despondent drunk the whole time.

So fingers crossed Doornick’s for real, and they pull the original, robotic Rocky IV and only Rocky vs. Drago remains. It’s a futile gesture of egomania from Stallone, which, coincidentally, describes the film in either cut.

Rocky IV’s awful.

Rocky IV (1985, Sylvester Stallone)

I rarely worry about how I’m going to get 250 words about a film. Rocky IV probably features 251 words of dialogue. Well, closer to 251 than not, anyway.

Really, what is there to say about this one? Stallone directs it poorly? Stallone substitutes montages and music videos for actual narrative content? It’s a ludicrous proposition from the opening credits, which directly involve the film’s eventual content of the U.S. versus the U.S.S.R. in the boxing ring–except it’s a narrative development, not something the film opens with. So, even though it looks cool (did they use hot air balloons for the boxing gloves) for a while, it’s nonsensical. It’s a reference to something the film’s characters don’t even know about yet, but the viewer would from the theatrical trailer… so it’s titles just for the viewer, which is rather goofy… but Stallone knows (or knew) his audience. They didn’t think.

It’s strange also because of the disjointedness. The beginning is this whole picture about Rocky’s boring eighties lifestyle with cars and robots and Carl Weathers thinking he’s getting old, then it turns into the east versus west thing. The montages don’t start until after Weathers dies.

However, none of that paragraph is to say the opening is good–well acted, directed or written–it’s just a solid narrative. Unlike the rest of the picture, which is a forty-five minute music video with some digressions.

Lots of people enjoy watching Rocky IV, regardless of its quality.

I do not.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Written and directed by Sylvester Stallone; director of photography, Bill Butler; edited by John W. Wheeler and Don Zimmerman; music by Vince DiCola; production designer, Bill Kenney; produced by Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler; released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Starring Sylvester Stallone (Rocky Balboa), Talia Shire (Adrian), Burt Young (Paulie), Carl Weathers (Apollo Creed), Brigitte Nielsen (Ludmilla Vobet Drago), Tony Burton (Duke), Michael Pataki (Nicoli Koloff), Dolph Lundgren (Captain Ivan Drago) and James Brown as the Godfather of Soul.

RELATED

Rocky Balboa (2006, Sylvester Stallone)

I’m fairly sure there’s never been a film like Rocky Balboa before. The closest is probably Escape from the Planet of the Apes. Rocky Balboa is about its story and its characters, but it’s also about the audience’s pre-exisiting relationship not with the characters, but with Rocky movies as a piece of history. Stallone uses this relationship early and sparsely, to establish Balboa as something worth watching. Once he’s done, he moves on to more interesting things, but Balboa maintains a mystique about it. The idea of a movie character aging in a film’s absence is one infrequently dealt with and usually poorly (The Color of Money). As a concept, it ought to work. (Clint Eastwood once said he’d do a ‘Dirty Harry Goes Fishing’ sequel). But Rocky Balboa is the first time I can think of it’s worked and it works really, really well. It’s easily the best film of the series (which, minus the first one, isn’t hard).

The boxing aspect of Rocky Balboa comes in so late, it’s actually unimportant to what’s going on in the movie itself. If Rocky had been a bowling champion, it’d be the same degree. Well, maybe not bowling. Arm-wrestling maybe. (I can’t remember the name of Stallone’s arm-wrestling movie). He’s old and he’s alone and it’s about him working his way out of a long rut, trying to reform a family around himself. When the boxing finally does come along, it seems like it might not even–if it weren’t a Rocky movie–go anywhere.

Stallone directs Balboa quieter than I’ve seen anyone direct a modern film in a long time. It’s a loving, patient approach and it works beautifully. Only when it gets to the boxing match, shot to look like a televised bout (on DV), does the film lose that understated beauty. Watching it, I wondered if Stallone intended it to look different because it actually was so removed from the rest of the film. I also wondered if it’d look different on DVD, once everything had been digitized. During the boxing match Stallone stumbles a little, trying to find the right way to present the story in film. These stumbles are never annoying though, just visible.

The acting from the principles is great–Stallone’s very aware of what he can and can not do and he only gives himself the stuff he can do. Similarly, Burt Young’s got a bunch of great stuff to do too. Geraldine Hughes plays a grown-up version of a character from the first film and she’s fantastic. Antonio Tarver is fine as the adversary, with some too weak scenes but enough to be a problem. As Rocky Jr., Milo Ventimiglia acts a little bit too much with his styled hair, but Stallone does a lot of work in those scenes and carries him through. The other scenes Ventimiglia’s in, he needs to look like a men’s watch model and manages. The stuff between Stallone and Young is great, but familiar. The stuff between Stallone and Hughes is great and new and somehow more rewarding, because this relationship is what kick-starts Rocky Balboa‘s story.

Going in to Balboa, I wasn’t expecting much. I was expecting something decent or at least inoffensively watchable, but certainly not something great. It was a really nice and totally unbelievable surprise.