Creed III Review
Creed III doesn’t come close to touching the heights of the original Creed, or the first two Rocky movies, but it’s a perfectly entertaining film that hits hard on occasion.
Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) is happily retired off the back of multiple world heavyweight title fights. His wife, Bianca (Tessa Thompson) is settled into her role as a producer, rather than a performer, of music, and his daughter is happily settled at school. At least, that’s how it seems. The reappearance of old friend Damian Anderson (Jonathan Majors) into Creed’s life, after an extended stretch in prison, shakes things up. After Creed gives Damian a title shot, he discovers a different side to the man. To stop a tyrant, Adonis will have to reckon with his own past, learn to talk about his feelings with his family, and ultimately beat the hell out of Diamond Dame Anderson.
Michael B. Jordan himself steps into the director’s chair here, and you can both feel his emotional connection to the material and the role he has played twice before now, and his unfettered and new director take on the material.
From a structural standpoint, the movie does at times feel overlong and untethered. These films in this franchise follow a fairly formulaic approach, but it hits consistently; initial intro, gets a shot at a big fight, loses, somehow gets another shot and has to find something in themselves to win. Creed III is a bit odd in that Adonis never gets that middle section. He’s already a title winner, living a great life with his family. Anderson reignites old trauma, but when Adonis goes up against him we haven’t really seen the two duke it out yet. It leads to a very off-balance picture, that in many areas doesn’t stack up.
That being said, Jordan’s directorial flair takes the fight scenes up a notch. He brings an anime sensibility to the brutal bouts that makes the punches hit harder, makes the energy more electric, and the whole in-ring thing fresh and unexpected.
Jordan continues to do well in his work as Adonis, particularly in those emotionally intense scenes here. The unsteady hand he shows with some of the family parts of the movie, and some of the out-of-the-ring boxing content, is much surer when it comes to the poisoned friendship between Adonis and Damian. Majors is absolutely fantastic as Damian. He is brutal, vulnerable and intense, and his performance is so incredibly different and diverse from his recent work as Kang in the MCU. He continues to solidify his presence as the soon to be greatest actor of his generation.
Ultimately, Creed III is a perfectly serviceable fight film, that hits the hardest when it takes its biggest swings - particularly around the trauma between Adonis and Damian.
