Rocky Balboa

Rocky Balboa, also known as Rocky 6 or Rocky VI, is an action, adventure, comedy, drama, sports, live action movie and the sixth installment in the Rocky series. It was written and directed by Sylvester Stallone, musically composed by Bill Conti, filmed by J. Clark Mathis, edited by Sean Albertson, distributed by Columbia Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Plot
A now long-retired, Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) runs a Philadelphia eatery and mourns the loss of his beloved wife, Adrian. Yearning to recapture a few of his glory days, he plans to re-enter the ring for a few low-profile, local matches. All that changes when Rocky accepts a challenge to fight the world's reigning heavyweight champion, Mason "the Line" Dixon (Antonio Tarver).

Why It Rocks

 * 1) The fight at the end is amazing. It seems like the most realistic and authentic of any of Rocky’s matches, and in a way, it is. It's well known that during filming they exchanged real punches. 60-year-old Sylvester Stallone allowed the real heavyweight champion to punch him in the face over and over again.
 * 2) Amazing acting.
 * 3) Rocky is probably the best in this movie that he's been since Rocky II. The character Rocky hadn't fought in the ring in more than twenty years, which parallelled with the fact that a new movie hadn't come out in almost the same amount of time. His age is addressed. This gave the character an underdog feeling that we haven't gotten from him in a while, again, parallelling the real-life fact that the movie was a bit of an underdog as nobody thought that it would be any good.
 * 4) Excellent cinematography.
 * 5) Rocky's opponent, Mason Dixon, continues the tradition of having real-life boxers play his opponents, in this case, Antonio Tarver.
 * 6) Great soundtrack.
 * 7) Mason Dixon is an interesting character. He's much more down to earth and more believable than most of Rocky's previous enemies. He and Rocky interact outside of the ring, and that allows us to relate to him.
 * 8) The announcer during the final match was a real boxing announcer, Michael Buffer.
 * 9) Lots of recurring characters that are given great justice. Burt Young returns one final time to cap of Paulie's character, they bring back Rocky's trainer Tony "Duke" Evers played by Tony Burton, they bring back Geraldine Hughes as Marie, and so on. They even had a flashback with Rocky's mentor, Micky, using stock footage of Burgess Meredith.
 * 10) This movie succeeds to bring Rocky back to its humble roots where Rocky V failed.
 * 11) This movie, along with Singin' in the Rain, Titanic, My Neighbor Totoro and Disney's famous movies like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast were referenced in We Bare Bears' episode Shush Ninja.

The Only Bad Quality

 * 1) The title doesn't really fit in some ways. MGM should have continued the tradition of numbering the sequels instead of calling it Rocky Balboa, which may confuse some newcomers to the series into thinking that it's a remake or reboot.

Trivia

 * Sylvester Stallone asked Carl Weathers, Mr. T, and Dolph Lundgren if he could use archive footage of their respective characters Apollo Creed, Clubber Lang, and Ivan Drago from the previous films as flashbacks. Mr. T and Lundgren were both fine with it, but Weathers wanted a role in the movie, to which Stallone reminded him that Apollo was killed by Drago in Rocky IV. So, Weathers refused Stallone any permission to use his footage. As a result, the brief clip of the fight between Rocky and Apollo was recreated using a body double. Eventually, Weathers would grant Stallone permission to use his footage in 2015's Creed.

Reception
Rocky Balboa has a 77% critic rating and a 76% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a 3.4/5 on Letterboxd, and a 7.2/10 on the International Movie Database (IMDB).

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