Rocky V

A series that became famous for its final battles in the ring, in front of a packed audience, accompanied by epic music, almost ends with a street fight between a loser and a scoundrel. That's how childhood heroes turn out. The sixth installment came just in time. (17/03/2006)

One captivating flashback about a declaration of love that we all have known for so many years, an excellent performance by Talia Shire, and that's it. Otherwise, Rocky V is so silly that it's sometimes unbearable. Everything is so blatantly contrived, full of cliches, and with a minimum of action. I understand the gap between this and the next entry because after such a fiasco, no one wanted to dig into Rocky again. Rocky meets a promising boxer on the street, at first, he doesn't even want to talk to him, but then somehow convinces him. They go to dinner, and Rocky, being a good guy, immediately offers him shelter – his son's room (?). For months, he only focuses on Tommy, his son seems to not exist even though he gets beaten up several times, robbed, and so on. Rocky is just like that, he gives to the poor whether they are his blood or not. And it's not just that, here Rocky Balboa is completely washed-up hero, he's no longer the endearing dumb guy with a good heart, he's a dull walking figure, which is quite regrettable. And even the final fight is nothing special. (04/05/2007)

The beginning and the ending are great, the return to old familiar places, Stallone's never-giving-up fighter is perfect, and I was pleased to see Bill Conti back. But that horrible plot with the young boxer and the son... Was that necessary? Up until this episode, Rocky has either avoided clichés altogether, or delivered them in an easily digestible manner. But this time it got stuck between my teeth. I'm glad the saga didn't end with this not-so-good entry, but that it was capped off with a more than worthy follow-up. (06/01/2016)

Oh well. It's the fifth installment, and one would expect it to be a bit weaker than the previous films. After all, it is quite difficult to maintain the quality by the fifth installment. Stallone decided to give his character a mid-life crisis and have him go through a personal drama and a family crisis. On top of that, he wants to become a manager and he will see how corrupt the world is. Suddenly, there's too much happening at once, the big fights are gone, everything is intimate and quite boring, and above all, it's predictable. Sure, the previous films were predictable too, but this one is just a bit forced. You get the feeling that Rocky is a completely different character here. But the ending is still great and adds a different style to it. Fortunately, the sixth installment came a bit later. (18/03/2014)