First Take: Creed II- well, it barely made the count

SYNOPSIS:

Under the tutelage of Rocky Balboa, heavyweight contender Adonis Creed faces off against Viktor Drago, son of Ivan Drago.

The difficult second film. A tricky thing to master indeed, especially with Ryan Coogler off on Black Panther duties- so it was a real task to make a sequel to Creed that was about as enjoyable as the original. Did Stephen Caple Jr manage to deliver a film that was as enjoyable? Unfortunately the answer is nope.

Caple Jr’s direction is pretty good, he is able to hold this one together in a pretty decent way and make a 2 hour 10 minute film that has its ups and downs, and could easily have been cut down a little bit, but the element of the film I have issues with is the script from Sylvester Stallone and Juel Taylor. It is just too predictable, and some bits of the film just drag on and on, however, the character development is pretty damn solid. It’s shot well by Kramer Morgenthau, and Ludwig Goransson turns in another good score.

Performance wise, Stallone, Michael B Jordan, Tessa Thompson and Phylicia Rashad return and absolutely kill it as expected, with Andre Ward, Milo Ventimiglia, Brigitte Nielsen and Russell Hornsby rounding out the cast, but obviously the link back to the original Rocky films is Dolph Lundgren, playing Ivan Drago for the first time in nearly 30 years. And good god, they made sure him and Florian Munteanu had the most intense moments in the film. It’s not perfect by any standard, but it’s still a big screen experience alright.

THE VERDICT

Compared to the 2015 film, Creed II isn’t as good. But it’s still a pretty solid film, even with the pacing and dialogue issues- I can easily see it hanging around in the box office for a while, but not for long, especially as Aquaman is about to start poaching some screens from next week.

RATING: 3.5/5