One last shot for Rocky

Jan 18 2007 Cinema

Mike Davies reviews the latest cinema releases

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ROCKY BALBOA * * *
Cert 12A, 100 mins

It’s been 16 years since the risible Rocky V hung up the gloves on the Italian Stallion boxing saga.

However, given that, Cop Land and his self-mocking vocal contribution to Antz aside, Sylvester Stallone’s career has been pretty much eating canvas ever since, it’s not too surprising to find him climbing back in the ring as writer, director and star for one final round with his most memorable – and lucrative – character.

Now 60, with wife Adrian three years dead, Rocky still lives in the old neighbourhood and runs a relatively successful Italian restaurant where he hands out free meals to other washed up pugilists and serves up anecdotes and autographs with the meatballs.

Reluctantly estranged from son Robert (now played by Milo Ventimiglia) who’s trying to escape from his father’s shadow, he still hangs around with self-pitying meatpacker brother-in-law Paulie (Burt Young) and, in a nostalgic visit to a former haunt, becomes reacquainted with Marie (Geraldine Hughes), the now older blue collar incarnation of the girl who gave him lip back in the original movie.

Romance doesn’t bloom, but friendship does, taking her teenage Jamaican son under his wing and giving her a job at the restaurant.

Meanwhile, out in the boxing world, reigning undefeated heavyweight champ Mason Dixon (Antonio Tarver) is smarting because there’s no worthy challengers to his title and the fans have lost interest.

But, when a sports show computer simulation pits him against Balboa in a virtual match, with Rocky declaring he still has "some stuff in the basement" it’s only a matter of time before the pair find themselves lining up in a real exhibition match of will vs skill. Mike Tyson cameo included.

Deliberately evoking the first movie (right down to echoed iconic images and Bill Conti’s soundalike score), it’s as predictably formulaic as it is nostalgically retro and poignantly melancholic with Stallone slipping comfortably back into Rocky’s slurred speech, shuffling gait, heavy-lidded sad puppy eyes and, in an impassioned address to the Philly boxing commission, baffling logic to deliver his best work in a decade.

Although there’s a big DVD awareness push on the 1976 original, it’s hard to imagine anyone who didn’t grow up with the franchise being lured in for this final instalment, especially since there’s no fight action until the last act.

However, despite some glaring script holes (not least conveniently forgetting the brain damage of Rocky V to post a clean bill of health), old fans will certainly enjoy making a reaquaintance with the training montages and sentimental corn for a comeback that, while no knockout, goes the distance with dignity.

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BABEL * * * *
Cert 15, 143 mins

In Amores Perros and 21 Grams it was a car crash that entwined unrelated characters in its repercussions.

For the final part of director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga's "death trilogy" it's the impact of a single bullet that resonates around three continents and four very different cultures.

In the mountains of Morocco, the young sons (Said Tarchani, Boubker Air El Caid) of a Berber goat herder, are playing with the hunting rifle he bought to fend off the jackals.

Looking to test how far it will shoot, the youngest takes an unthinking pot shot at a bus on the distant road. Inside the bullet strikes Susan (Cate Blanchett), an American tourist travelling with husband Richard (Brad Pitt) to seek healing after a recent tragedy. Miles from anywhere, he must try and find medical assistance to save her life.

As word of the shooting reaches the media and America declares it a terrorist incident, the Moroccan authorities set out on a manhunt.

Meanwhile, in California the couple's young children, Debbie and Mike, have been left in the care of their long time Mexican nanny Amelia (Adriana Barraza).

But her son’s getting married across the border and, unable to find anyone to look after the kids, she's persuaded by nephew Santiago (Gael Garcia Bernal) to take them with her to the wedding. The journey back to San Diego, Santiago the worse for drink, will become a nightmare.

The fourth strand unfolds in Tokyo. Here surly deaf-mute teenager Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi) is struggling to break free from the overwhelming sense of isolation created by the response of others to her disability, her mother's suicide and the resulting emotional divide that has opened between her and her businessman father (Koji Yakusho). It is he who provides the brilliantly conceived connection between all the characters.

Taking its title from the Biblical story where God cursed the world to be divided by different languages, it's a physically and emotionally ambitious work that, as with Inarritu's previous films, subtly plays on themes of miscommunication, separation, loss and parent-child relationships.

Darkening in tone the further it progresses, it ends on notes of both hope and despair while also offering an implied