Rocky stands over the grave, his head hanging, his eyes filled with tears. He fights to win some inner battle we can only imagine he must be fighting. His lips tighten, and he cries out in despair: "Help me, Mickey!"
He looks to an old friend for an answer: Should I fight? Should I stay retired? The audience is now holding back its own tears, and as we await the answer and a decision from this, the sixth incarnation of the Hollywood hero, we wonder, silently, "Why can't that be somebody else talking to Rocky's corpse?"
For some reason, Sylvester Stallone thinks that watching a metaphor of his life after what should have been his retirement will be more interesting than his actual life after what should have been his retirement. Unfortunately for us, neither Rocky's movie son nor his real son (starring in the movie as his movie son) have had the balls to say, "Yo dad, haven't you milked that tired, uneducated, right-hooker with a heart of gold, recycled bullshit long enough?"
As much as we'd like to see Rambo Does Tehran, the only implausible, covert mission we get to see in this movie is Rocky breaking out of a maximum-security nursing home and deluding himself and entire audiences into thinking he can beat the fuck out of his latest thirty-something arch-arch-rival, played this time by Antonio "Magic Man" Tarver. Too bad for Tarver, and for the entire sport of boxing, that Tarver already got executed in real life by Bernard "the Executioner" Hopkins in June of 2006. Shit, if 40-something Hopkins can do it in 12 rounds, why not Rocky?
What the hell, here's my prediction: Rocky over Tarver by split decision. And no, I still haven't seen the movie.
