My Review of "Rocky V"

Rocky V is a regarded as one of the worst Rocky movies of the franchise. It came out in 1990. I was dreading the moment where I would have to check this movie out but I'm going through this series chronologically. This movie would be inevitable. Fortunately, I don't think it's quite as rock bottom terrible as others believe it to be, but it isn't a great movie either.

The movie starts out just as the other movies of the franchise. There's a big recap of the previous movie here. Rocky had his brains beaten out by Drago in the last movie. Here they say Rocky has suffered massive brain damage and PTSD. As a result, Rocky is forced into retirement. That wouldn't be too far fetched since the Rocky wanted to retire in the last movie.

This movie then gives Rocky and his family another obstacle. Apparently, Paulie had given power of Rocky's estate to some criminals resulting in a broke Balboa family. I can understand why they did this. They wanted to bring the movie back to its roots in Philadelphia and bring back the grit of the first movie.

Then we have this young upstart boxer, Tommy, wants Rocky to manage him. This would put the Rocky character full circle. He would now be playing the role of Mickey to a new boxer. Again this kind of makes sense. We have Rocky doing something yet again, he didn't anticipate getting into.

I can see that this is where the die hard fans would push against this movie. All of the movies see Rocky as the boxer and seeing him as a manager is tonally out there. It doesn't feel quite right especially for a movie of his own franchise.

There are also a lot of cheesy characters and moments in this movie. It screams of the era that it came from. We have this new opposing promoter who is a caricature of real life promoter Don King. He plays off like Jackie Chiles from Seinfeld who was a caricature of Johnny Cochrane of the OJ Simpson trial. Again this came out in 1990 so that's definitely not the case. I have hindsight seeing this movie so many years in the future. All this to say, I couldn't take this character seriously. He was so absurd that he felt like a joke and that's not what they were going for.

There was a cool element of Rocky living his life through Tommy and kind of ignoring his family as a result. People don't think of this but Rocky was doing this throughout his career. Only now are they putting a spotlight on it as the movie isn't being focused on him as a fighter anymore. This is actually a great dramatic element of the movie but it was tough for them to focus on Tommy's career while this is happening.

I loved the addition of Mickey back into the movie. There was a scene close to the end that I really liked with him in it. He was sorely missed in the previous movie. It's also weird that it took a whole movie for Rocky to realize that he misses his old manager.

The whole concept of this movie is bonkers They bring up way more questions by creating this movie in the first place. Drago from the previous movie was such a formidable foe yet they just give Rocky's title to some bum in Philadelphia. It doesn't make sense. Nothing makes sense in this movie but you go with it because it's part of the story they're telling. As a stand alone story it kind of works. As a movie in the franchise it is tone deaf and doesn't fit right.

Overall, I wasn't bored while watching this. It did however bring up tons of questions in my head while watching it. Fans of the franchise can be understandably upset with this movie but they can't tell me that they were bored while watching it. There are some interesting elements to this movie that will keep you watching. Again, that doesn't mean it's a great movie. You can stay away from this movie and still be fine as a Rocky fan. I have to give this one a 5 out of 10.