'Creed III' A Review

Creed III is a sports melodrama, the 3rd installment in the Creed series the 9th in the Rocky oeuvre. The movie opens on a flashback to 2002 with a young Adonis sneaking out of his house to meet his friend Dame and go to a boxing match(which Dame wins) on the way home the two get into an altercation, Adonis flees and Dame gets incarcerated for 18 years. Flashfoward to Adonis's(Michael B. Jordan) last fight, which he wins, and then retires. Flashfoward again Adonis and his wife Bianca(Tessa Thompson) have a daughter Amara, are very rich, and seem to be relatively content but yearn to be back in their respective fields(Adonis now runs Delphi Boxing, Bianca has put her solo career on hold to produce). Enter Dame(Jonathan Majors) fresh out of prison and driven to be a contender. Sound like a lot of plot? There's more!

Jordan, behind the camera as well as in front of it, doesn't make a particularly compelling case for either role. Adonis, as written, seems to have reset to a kind of reserved, prideful, petulance that he had in the original Creed jettisoning much of the character progress from I and II. The character is confused, muddled, and not particularly sympathetic and Jordan doesn't do much to bring him out of that morass of the page. We seem to be at the point again, asking the question who is Adonis Creed? As a result the titular character, the franchise focus, is the weakest link. Majors absolutely stuns, he is electric and emotive, raw and magnetic. When his character has a couple of illogical plot cartwheels he sells them. Thompson also comes out well, brings grounded, realistic, emotion. The rest of the cast doesn't get much screen time and a lot of what they do is dictated by the overly stuffed plot(particularly egregious in the case of the excellent Wood Harris and queen herself Phylicia Rashad). Perhaps the emotional logic is sound but the pacing is off, it simply covers too much ground and the drama is rendered as melodrama.

Visually the film is slick but generic, Jordan as director makes a couple of inspired flourishes in some of the shots in the fight scenes but the choreography itself is uninspired the same is true of the training montage, typically a highlight of the franchise, here seems to be an afterthought. Jordan doesn't seem particularly interested in engaging with these tropes of the series, which is OK but then what is he interested in is unclear. The music is fine but mostly forgettable and the production design is immaculate but all the economic opulence on display with Adonis and his family seems to undercut/avoid, again, one of the franchises staple themes- class- this is hinted at in the relationship between Adonis and Dame but under explored.

Jordan's ascent to stardom has plateaued and Creed III demonstrates his recent lack of growth. Without Ryan Coogler or Stallone directly involved the movie doesn't provide the necessary magic. Worth seeing solely for Majors performance.

Currently in theaters, coming soon to VOD.

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