Rocky Balboa - Review

I have seen previous 5 Rocky Movies, and with the 6th one I have completed viewing the whole rocky series. Since I saw the first 5 Rocky movies back to back broadcasted on TV Channel Sony Pix, I am a fan of Rocky series. So here is a review of Rocky Balboa for Rocky fans who haven’t watched the 6th and last installment in the series.Before I would say anything about the latest Rocky movie, let me tell you what I really liked about old Rocky movies. Old Rocky movies had wonderful dialogues, nice cinematography, impeccable direction and lengthy enough as if you were watching a real person living a real life. By end of every Rocky movie you get to know something about this wonderful lead character. The first Rocky movie was a good start for the series with John G. Avildsen’s direction. The series had major elements like emotions and heart warming humor. Talking about heart warming humor, there were realistic moments like in one of the scenes when Rocky Balboa talks about his fears of fighting undefeatable heavy weight champion Apollo Creed to his girl friend Adrian. Adrian asks Rocky “Why do you want to fight?” to which Rocky gently replies “Because I can't sing or dance!!” The characterization was so realistic, you can clearly make out that Rocky is not a humorous person but a funny person with style. In all the Rocky movies there is one element that drives the lead character, that’s Fear!! Rocky prefers calling it “Franky Fear”. He passes on the same knowledge to his student Tommy Gunn in ‘Rocky V’ but in vain Tommy chooses a different path and ends up in a fight with Rocky and obviously looses.Rocky is religious though not very orthodox. Visits a father in the church to get blessings before every fight, Rocky is not very intellectual but a very smart person with a strong character. To say in short, he is a small cup but it’s full indeed. There was nothing I really disliked in any of the five movies and watching them was really a great experience. Now we come to the point, the last installment of the series off course. So how was the movie and how did it fit in as the conclusion of the series? Well we could say the conclusion to the Rocky series was great but however there were flaws in the cinematography, flaws as such was with the consistency in the series. In older Rocky movies when we saw two characters talking the camera angle was such that a person is actually watching two people talk. But in Rocky 6, face close-ups were used which is very typical in modern movies these days (its not fun watching characters that way you know!!) But the music in the movie did remain consistent as we hear the Rocky theme music “Gonna fly now” played by Bill Conti in this movie too. Talking about the emotional elements, it still exists in this movie, in fact there are some scenes where Rocky really makes you cry when he talks about his past and how he misses his late wife Adrain. The conversations between characters that take place in the second half of the movie are not long enough which is very un-typical of Rocky movies. Rocky teams up with his third trainer since Rocky IV Duke “Evers” who was formerly Apollo Creed’s trainer to prepare himself for a match after a comeback since his retirement with yet another undefeatable champion Mason Dixon who has fought 33 matches so far. The fight training scenes were rather too brief; the training scenes hardly lasted for 3 minutes when compared to longer training scenes in older rocky movies which could really inspire the watcher to get into the ring. Short training scenes were justified since Rocky decides to do more of weight training than training himself for speed since he is too old to do that kind of training. Finally the scene that makes the ending of all Rocky movies, the fight scene: The final fight scene in the movie was too short. Most of the rounds are shown in quick cuts and we never really get to see Rocky doing punches in close-ups that often. Well could be a possibility that Stallone is now in his 60’s and cant do fight endurance fight scenes like he did in his old Rocky movies. Good thing is, the movie ends with Rocky’s famous line, when Rocky kisses Adrian’s Grave stone and says “Yo! Adrian!! We did it”.To brief up, Rocky Balboa is a good movie and a good conclusion to the series but at some places was not in par with the old Rocky movies. If you are a Rocky fan, the movie is a sure watch.