Creed III * * *

Creed III is the third in a franchise series. If you are at all interested in the previous films, my reviews are linked here: Creed II  and  Creed.  I'll wait.....

Naively, I will assume you have actually read the reviews linked above. 

So.....  Adonis (such a modest name) is now retired, rich and happy. His car is a Rolls Royce and his magnificent house is on top of the hill. 

Weirdly, his near-deaf wife now seems to be able to hear again, but his little daughter remains stone deaf.  He runs a gym where his old foes and friends are now conveniently located. A one stop shop for the past characters (minus Rocky).

But.... before all that we are given a flashback to when Adonis was a naughty boy and sneaking out at night to go to illegal amateur boxing matches. His best mate Damian was doing okay as a boxer.  One night, after Damian has another successful night in the ring,  Adonis attacks someone outside an all-night store.  Things turn bad.  Damian pulls a gun.  The cops turn up.  Damian takes the rap and ends up in prison.

Flippant Phil is reviewing this
so I want a good clean fight, okay?

Now Damian is out and finding it hard to accept that he has lost eighteen years of his life.  

He wants a shot at the title and he wants Adonis to help him. "You at least owe me that".  Adonis agrees to set up a match between Damian and the protégé that Adonis is nurturing.

The fight is set and Damian crushes the protégé.  Damian fights like a an ex-con (I wonder why?).  After this Damian becomes a monster taunting and threatening Adonis.  

Adonis figures the only way to tame Damian is to pull on his old shorts and personally beat him in front of the whole world. "Bring it" Damian says to him.  (You know how it goes).  In keeping with the Creed series it's a bit of a corny story, but that's the way these boxing film are supposed to go.  

The acting is good and the fight scenes are frighteningly convincing. Michael B. Jordan plays Creed again and also has a crack at directing. But Jonathon Majors steals the show as Damian with a superbly developed  portrait of a fine young man, badly hurt by the prison system and finding it hard to fit back in to society  His internal pain radiates.

With Creed now in his forties I don't know if they'll squeeze out another one, but there are a few scenes that suggest little deaf daughter might be up for it sometime in the future.  Though they might have been beaten to the punch (pun intended ) with "Small, but Slow Steady", a Japanese film about a deaf female boxer.  Interestingly. like other Girl Boxing films (Girlfight, Million Dollar Baby) it goes a lot deeper than most male boxing films.

Like the other Creed films, Creed III knows its stuff.  It knows what it's viewers want, and it delivers.