Creed * * *

There have been a few big budget boxing films this year, so I wonder if watching someone get punched in the face is back in vogue. Though I don’t think boxing has ever really been absent from cinema for long, and never will be.

More than any other sport boxing lends itself to good drama, with rags to riches stories and overcoming all odds.  Plus there is always a big fight of course.  And no one knows how to get the most out of a boxing fairy tale quite like Rocky.   So popular was the Rocky franchise they encouraged him to get back in the ring when Rocky was in his fifties, just so we could see him punch someone in the face one more time (and cop a few himself) - and that was twenty years ago, and twenty years since the first Rocky Film.

So now, forty years after the first Rocky film. Rocky is back again.  Sort of.  Creed is a Rocky film without the name, but not without Rocky who is now nearly seventy. Mercifully we don’t ask him to get into the ring this time.

Adonis Creed is the illegitimate, institutionalised, forgotten son of his old opponent and later friend, Apollo Creed. Being a successful banker Adonis had already gone from rags to riches before the story begins.  But for some reason he wants to do what Daddy did and punch people in the face for a living.

So he seeks out the champion Rocky Balboa and begs, harangues and cajoles him into becoming his trainer.  Then the big fight with some cocky English fella who is the world champion is set up,. and the boys train to that end.

Creed doesn’t disappoint. As surely as a Rocky film it ticks all the boxes of overcoming adversity, meeting a pretty girl who cheers for him and worries about him at the same time, and a trainer with problems of his own which he stoically tries to keep hidden as he trains his boy.

Then there are the punches to the face; they don’t disappoint either, if that’s your thing. It is so realistic I could only conclude the actors must have learnt how to box, got in the ring, and started boxing.

Creed is a good film in it’s own way - a crowd pleaser -  and it’s good to see Sylvester Stallone doing Rocky again: the warm reception of this film suggests a lot of other people think it is good too.  But to to be honest,  I can’t help but wonder if Creed is enjoying it’s very high approval rating more from nostalgia than anything else.