The Italian Stallion

While looking for a movie that was made before my time I came to find out that I am quite deprived of a movie library of the 70’s and back. I did come across one of my favorites though-Rocky. Rocky is one of those movies that almost everyone at least has heard about. It isn’t just a fantastic and amazing story but it is inspiring. Rocky brought home many Oscars for best director, best film editing, best picture and was nominated for Oscars for best actor in a leading role, best actor in a supporting role (Burgess Meredith), best actor in a supporting role (Burt Young), best actress in a leading role, best music, best sound, best writing. The awards can speak for themselves.

With the champion Apollo Creed on top of the boxing world he gives an amateur the chance for the title and this is where Rocky comes in. Apollo sees him in a boxing club and rights him off saying he would knock him out by the third round. Apollo then begins to advertise the fight rather than train for it dressing as George Washington and Uncle Sam. Rocky Balboa is an inner city man who is slightly stubborn but innocent. He begins training under Mickey who tells him to “eat lightning and poop thunder”–just like a boxing coach right. While Rocky’s is training he meets a shy and reserved girl, Adrian, who he falls in love with. Rocky later goes 15 rounds with Apollo Creed and loses by a controversial split decision.

Rocky has an interesting history of love and hate. Rocky like many boxing movies does a horrible job of filming an authentic fight. For boxing fans this is important. Some have said about the fight between Rocky and Apollo that Apollo made mistakes a real boxing champion would never make and a referee would never allow such a bloodbath.

For those who are less familiar with boxing the movie is a masterpiece. The scenes of Rocky going through boxing drills, punching raw meat, and running up a buildings steps while “Eye of the Tiger” plays in the background is inspiring and compels me to become a gym rat that could also fight Apollo Creed. The subplot of Rocky and Adrian’s blooming relationship draws that connection between the viewer and the actors. With love on the line now the fight suddenly becomes more than just victory but survival. Rocky has something to live for. The producers take advantage of this in the Rocky IV when we finally get a connection with Apollo and then he is killed by the Russian heavyweight. Without this subplot between Rocky and Adrian I hardly think that the movie would have carried any weight. In a movie we need something more than sheer pride and a need to feel like the best in a character to really root him on.

We also root for Balboa because the odds are so much against him. Rocky comes from the slums and Apollo Creed is an established champion boxer. All logic tells us Apollo will crush him. Americans like the underdog story, probably because we too were underdogs at one time at the dawn of our birth. There is something more than just a good boxing story with a love story accompanying it. This movie tells us that hope is always there. This is an idea we as Americans have been taught but sometimes forget. Rocky digs deep into our inner being and pulls that hope back to the surface. The movie tells us we can be triumphant and get the girl too.

So obviously there is something that can be said for a good plot but is authenticity also important. Many said that Ali starring Will Smith was a wonderful movie because the boxing scenes were so real and right to a tee. The same has been said about Disney’s Miracle. I do wish Rocky was more believable in the fight scenes but if the script would have held strictly to what should and should not happen it might have become more of a movie for the boxing community and less for the mass public. The mass public wants drama and big hits and lots of blood after all. While I don’t believe that the movie actually is carried by the boxing scene it is important that it ends in a bang. Obviously the big fight is what everyone is waiting for and keeps people watching but everything before the movie is needed before we can get to the fight scene. In the same way the fight scene needs to be fantastic to validate the whole story before it. So whether authenticity is important or not is up to the individual and depends on the goal of the movie. If the movie is striving to reach a mass public and more emphasis is on the characters then authenticity isn’t as important, but if the movie focuses on displaying the sport of boxing such as in Ali, which is trying to show boxing as a part of history¸ then the authenticity is definitely important.