Creed III. M, 116 minutes. Three stars.
With the 1976 film Rocky, its writer and star Sylvester Stallone created a film franchise now nine films long, almost 50 years of audience-building, and beating the Star Wars franchise for longevity by one year.
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It seems Rocky Balboa, the Stallone character, had his eight-film-long storyline conclude in the 2018 Creed II, as in this film one of Rocky's old fights gets name-checked but the man himself doesn't get a mention.
Stallone does produce the film, and as producer he supports his former co-star and now lead performer Michael B. Jordan as he makes his feature film directing debut.
In Creed and Creed II, Jordan was playing the young up-and-coming fighter Adonis Creed, son of Rocky's old friend and sparring partner Apollo Creed, played by Carl Weathers in the first four Rocky films.
The broken, ageing Rocky took on the younger Creed as his protege and across those two films the promising young boxer went from aspiring amateur to champion.
As this film opens, it is a number of years later and Adonis Creed is now a retired former world heavyweight boxing champion.
Life is fairly sweet for the Creed family, living in the Los Angeles hills in a palatial mansion where wife Bianca (Tessa Thompson) can work in her home studio as a record producer while keeping an eye on their daughter Amara (Mila Davis-Kent).
Adonis's career has moved on to being a fight promoter, looking for an opponent for his fighter Felix Chavez (Jose Benavidez), but with 14 straight title wins, nobody wants to take on a losing bet.
With impeccable timing, an old childhood friend of Adonis's walks back into their lives, built like a brick crap-house and begging Adonis to let him step into the ring against Chavez.
Damian Anderson, or Dame (Jonathan Majors), spent some years with Adonis in their younger years in a juvenile home, and the two have a long history that includes Dame getting Adonis started in boxing but also includes an 18-year break as Dame served prison time.
Out and looking for a fresh start, Dame approaches Adonis for a break and is offered a job as Chavez's training partner.
While Dame is a little rough and a little loose with the rules of boxing, he is quite obviously a physical match for the world champion, so when Chavez's opponent in a heavily promoted match is injured, Adonis Creed gives his old friend his big break.
I'm going to stop the synopsis there - it's fairly obvious where this is going, with two old friends squaring off against each other.
For a first-time director, Jordan does a very good job, notably in the film's handful of fight scenes, understanding the ballet of the match. He and fight choreographer Mark R. Miscione build these scenes as exciting and beautiful to watch.
Jordan obviously learned a lot under Ryan Coogler, his Creed director who also cast him in Black Panther.
It's a pity the screenplay by Keenan Coogler and Zach Baylin is only so-so, even if it does hit all the expected Rocky beats along the way, including a more contemporary Hollywood Hills take on that great scene from the original Rocky with Stallone running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Being an actor himself, Jordan draws out strong performances from his cast, notably Jonathan Majors, certainly having a moment right now and probably for the next five years as his Kang the Conqueror character is set to appear in the next half-dozen Marvel films and TV series.
Majors and Jordan have put a lot of work into their physiques for these roles and they're very believable athletes, convincing boxers and they play well against each other.
