I didn’t get around to seeing Creed III in theaters. This was the first film in the series without Rocky, and if I’m being honest, I wasn’t completely convinced they could pull it off without Stallone. I’ll be damned if first-time director Michael B. Jordan didn’t knock it out of the park. The first two Creed movies built the foundation for the character of Adonis “Donnie” Creed. This one establishes that he can stand on his own two feet without the baggage of Rocky’s legacy hanging over him.
This time we find Creed (Jordan) spending more time promoting other fighters than actually boxing in the ring. When his former friend Damian Anderson (Jonathan Majors) comes back from a long prison stretch, Creed tries to lend him a helping hand out of a sense of misplaced loyalty. It doesn’t take long for Anderson to show his true colors and reveal he has a sinister agenda all his own.
Yes, the boxing sequences are great, but I really loved the quiet scenes of Creed’s home life. The scenes where he has tea parties with his daughter and secretly training her to box are really sweet without being schmaltzy. Jordan’s domestic scenes with Tessa Thompson have a lot of heart too, and the subplot with Wood Harris as Donnie’s faithful trainer who knows Anderson’s up to no good is strong too. Majors gives an intimidating performance and makes a good foil for Jordan, who once again carries the movie effortlessly. I liked too that Anderson was basically a villain from a ‘90s “From Hell” thriller mixed with your typical boxing adversary.
With Creed III, Jordan announces himself as a director to watch. He proves he can film training montages and boxing sequences with the best of them. I especially liked how he slowed some of the fights way down (I guess you could call it “Creed Time”) as he picks out his opponents’ weaknesses and exploits them. The awesomely over-stylized final match where it becomes so personal between the combatants that the crowd completely disappears, and we see just two guys fighting for their lives was particularly effective. This sequence alone has me chomping at the bit to see what Jordan will do next as a director. There are also some nice cameos from the previous Creed movies, which shows that his past opponents are still in his sphere and that they’ve almost… but maybe not quite… buried the hatchet.
I also liked the new locale, Los Angeles, which helped untether this entry from the previous Philly-set films. The final fight takes place at Dodger Stadium and there’s a wonderful tweak on the typical Rocky running-up-the-steps motif that I wouldn’t dream of spoiling. In short, this is a knockout. The Rocky/Creed series remains undefeated and undisputed.
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