To say that Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone, who also wrote and directed) is past his prime is putting it mildly. Adrian is gone - she passed a few years ago from "women's cancer", and now each year on her birthday Rocky visits sites where they shared a few special moments. We see her here only in Rocky's memories and in the name of Rocky's restaurant, Adrian's.
But when a television computer projects that Rocky in his prime could beat the current heavyweight champion Mason "The Line" Dixon, something in Rocky's "basement" (down in his gut) starts to stir. He wonders what it would be like to fight again. Nothing big, but just a few local fights. So he applies to get re-licensed.
When the papers pick up on it, Dixon's camp gets wind of it and decides it could be the payday that he's been waiting for all these years.
It seems that no one likes Dixon. He's fighting people that he can beat easily, and so everyone thinks little of his ability. Sounds like someone else I know. Wasn't that the focus of one of these Rocky movies?
So apparently against Dixon's wishes, his managers come to confront Rocky and ask him if he would be up for an exhibition with Dixon, with some of the proceeds going to charity. Rocky at first brushes it off, saying that he just wanted to fight locally, but of course you knew that this is what he wanted all along, and he agrees.
With that, his training begins. But it's not like the training of other movies. Instead, the entire training lasts perhaps five minutes, and essentially just involves him being able to lift weights and deliver "blunt force trauma". Whether or not this works or not is irrelevant to some degree.
This should be a sign that this movie is different than all but the very first in the series. The focus is actually not on the fight, but on the other events surrounding Rocky's life. Though Adrian has been gone for some time, Rocky still mourns her - he even keeps a folding chair in the tree near her grave (presumably indicating that he's there a lot).
He goes through the motions in life, trying to connect with his son, but not really being successful at it. He tells stories at his restaurant, but you get the message that he is only rehashing his glory days over and over again when the diners repeat the stories back to him. Something is missing.
One night at a bar he runs across a girl that he helped home when she was young, and now she's grown up and he helps her, and while awkward, it's like he has found a purpose. He helps her by giving her a job at his restaurant, and he helps her son as well. But it's never quite clear if he's helping her like a dad or as a romantic interest, and it might actually be somewhat creepy if the latter.
Eventually we get to the fight, and it's probably the most anticlimactic fights in the series, with only 30 minutes or so dedicated to the fight itself. It has been said that this will be the last in the series, and I can say that is probably true, but I can see only one way that this would absolutely be the last - and that way didn't happen. I think if Rocky had died in the ring, it would have been an awesomely powerful ending - and it would have definitely put an end to things.
As it was, it was a decent ending, but it could have been so much better.
Rated PG for boxing violence and some language.
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