Oh boy! We've got yet another Rocky movie, this time written by an over-the-top hardship pornographer. All this film needs is a girlfriend recovering from heroin addiction, and the pathos of that, and her illegitimate child who needs an operation no one can afford.... The hero will go in the proving ground and battle for the blah blah blah.
The women ogle pectoral definition and the men clench their fists and swing their shoulders. Really, this film just rehashes all those old 1970s buttons and levers to try to make us root for the fighter and his noble cause. There's nothing new here and in a year or so it will have slipped from the top 250 to a more reasonable middle-of-the-pack seat on the list.
Most sports movies have a set pattern to some extent and almost invariably involve an underdog, a villain, and a subplot of some family issue. We expect it and it's the variations on these themes that make or break a movie. This is all cliché stapled to a newish sport.
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