Creed III

Still dominating the boxing world, Adonis Creed is now thriving in his career and in his family life. But when a man named Damian, a former childhood friend and boxing prodigy with a grudge against Adonis, resurfaces serving time in prison, he's eager to prove that he deserves his shot in the ring too. The face-off between former friends is more than just a fight. To settle this score, Adonis must put his future on the line to battle Damian -- a fighter who has nothing to lose.

Having gone out at the top of the boxing world, Adonis Creed is now retired and quietly living with his family, enjoying a new career as a promoter, when an old friend knocks on his door.

As a young man, Damian was once a person of promise, a boxing prodigy, but now he’s fresh out of prison and with nothing left to him but the chance to recapture his long lost dreams of being the champ. Consumed by guilt, Adonis opens doors for his old friend. Consumed by jealousy, Damian sees Adonis as living the life that he was supposed to have. The pair are on a path that can only end in one place… two fighters in the ring, one with everything to lose, and one with nothing to lose.

Creed 3 is the latest film in the Rocky spinoff franchise, and the ninth picture overall in the popular pugilistic parable. Overall, it is a fitting goodbye to this most distinctly American franchise, if that is indeed what it is…

This time, the movie is directed by star Michael B. Jordan, and while he’s no Ryan Coogler, he does a pretty decent job, despite a few heavy-handed visual choices. But to be fair, these films do have an expected way of going, so maybe a bit of unexpected visual flair is a good thing… but then, they aren’t that great a thing either.

The main conflict in Creed 3 is a pretty black and white affair, with the two leads in the final fight even wearing trunks with the color to match their motivation, but that is just the surface meaning of the movie, laid over a story about regret, resentment, guilt, loss, and finally... closure. This is definitely a boxing movie--there’s some really great fights--but at its center, it is a story about two men who are opposite sides of the same coin, where a single moment ultimately determined the course of their lives, and now they are caught up in trying to change that past, with the question of whether or not they will learn to focus on the future instead hanging over everything. This is a film that gives you exactly what you want, but it also has much more on its mind, and it does a good job of giving you that too.

But not so much that it gets in the way of the punching...

All that aside, no matter what else, at the very least Creed 3 will always serve as a reminder of that towering monument to the Dunning-Krugerrand, the ridiculously dated stupidity that was renaming the Staples Center as the Crypto.com Arena, so really, if we’re being honest… this is a film about two legends.