"ROCKY" DVD GIFT SET
contains all five films

ROCKY-****/*****
Geographical and biological circumstances have shackled Rocky "The Italian Stallion" Balboa and his inner circle. A small-time Philadelphia fighter who's way too sensitive for his day job as muscle to a loan shark, Rocky is a legend in his own mind. Although he exudes self-confidence, little kids talk back to him fearlessly; his locker at the gym has been repossessed by ex-contender Mickey (Burgess Meredith) (the change room hook upon which Rocky's laundry bag of equipment now hangs is termed "skid row"); and Adrian (Talia Shire), the ugly-duckling pet shop girl for whom he pines, won't give him the time of day. (There's a great joke in the vast number of pets Rocky owns.)

In 1976's Best Picture-winning Rocky, Balboa is plucked from anonymity. (Doubtless that then-unknown Stallone was aiming for self-fulfilling prophecy when he wrote the film.) After his original opponent for a Bicentennial match drops out, visiting prizefighter Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) looks locally for a replacement. He picks Rocky out of a directory, because he likes the marquee potential: "Apollo Creed versus The Italian Stallion--sounds like a damn monster movie!"

"There are certain parallels between Rocky and me. Rocky had drive and intelligence and the talent to be a fighter, but nobody noticed him. The second ingredient had to be me, my particular inability to be recognized. I felt Rocky to be the perfect vehicle for that kind of sensibility. So I took my story and injected it into the body of Rocky Balboa because no one, I felt, would be interested in listening to or watching or reading a story about a down-and-out, struggling actor/writer."

This is what Stallone said in "Playboy Magazine". (Told you I read it for the articles.) Yet Stallone's metaphors also seem like valid observations of the sport. As Rocky enters the arena to come to blows with Apollo, the scene is fraught with dread. His skulk from backstage to the ring suggests the last mile on death row, which is another valuable prison metaphor at work in Rocky: boxer as dead-man-walking. This is certainly apropos to Mickey, the frail ghost of glories past who mentors Rocky for vicariousness.

While the sequels linger as much as the original does on the build-up to the main event, there's less at stake for all involved, both on- and off-camera. Moreover, as successive Rockys adopted a formula of fight-train-fight, Stallone's plot devices got cheaper, desperate (i.e., beloved characters die). (He not only wrote and starred in but also directed Rocky II through Rocky IV.) Simultaneously, the movies became slick tournaments of their own, increasingly defined by Rocky's competitors. (See Rocky fight Mr. T! See Rocky fight a Commie!)

The twenty-fifth anniversary of Rocky "I" occasions a revisit and might surprise you with its mix of low-key gentility, supple grit, and Darwinian themes of incarceration (exploited visually by way of dingy, concrete settings and recurring parallel lines; a steel birdcage eclipses our view of Adrian in an early encounter, to cite one instance) which could only have come from a fledgling artiste. "I'm gonna know for the first time in my life that I weren't just another bum from the neighbourhood," put Stallone, who waived a scripting fee to star in the production, into the mouth of alter ego Rocky Balboa. Rocky is the escapist ideal: it has one foot in our world and the other in the dreamland of opportunity.

Replacing MGM's bare-bones DVD of Rocky is a strategically timed Special Edition. Sporting (har har) a newer, 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer, the print used could be in better shape--pinholes abound--but its crisp detail enthuses. Colours, drab though they are, remain stable, while contrast varies from good to excellent. (Admire the rich shadows when Mickey pays Rocky's apartment a visit in chapter 13.) The 5.1 Dolby Digital remix is mostly superfluous, as the soundtrack still lacks bass and noticeable split surround usage. Bill Conti's famous "Gonna Fly" gains texture, but that's about it for improvement on the 1976 mono track (also included, for posterity).

The studio has finally scored with non-"Bond" bonus material. For starters, supplemental creators Three-Legged Cat weave an insightful commentary--moderated by sporadic contributor Burt "Pauly" Young--from individually recorded accounts made by Avildsen, Shire, Weathers (unlisted, like Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown, on the packaging), and producers Irwin Winkler & Robert Chartoff (ultimately and ironically also responsible for Raging Bull). It's the aural equivalent of the indispensable tome The Official Rocky Scrapbook; listen to it and you'll glean tidbits about the Avildsen-directed Rocky V (he thinks it's too brightly lit), Weathers' concerns about "reverse whiteface," and much, much more. We rarely get an ensemble commentary this deftly edited outside Criterion.

Where's Stallone in that group, you ask? Well, he gets a 28-minute piece all to himself, a featurette whose "video commentary" label is misleading. It's an intimate, motivational interview that basically expands on the aforementioned "Playboy" quote, and at the end of the piece, he admits he's chased Rocky's overall high since. (Art imitates life imitates art.) Stallone shows up again in the 8-minute "A Tribute to Burgess Meredith", as do the disembodied voices of select colleagues (plus Lee Grant?!). (Aside: Weathers' impressions of Stallone and Meredith here are disquieting in their accuracy.)

A second homage, "A Tribute to James Crabe" (3 mins.), is Avildsen's moving hat-tip to the late cinematographer of Rocky. Avildsen, a dead-ringer for Ernest Borgnine, also hosts never-before-seen 8mm footage of Stallone and Weathers rehearsing/choreographing their duel; these reels are otherwise accompanied by clickety-clack projector noise, to sentimental effect. "Round"ing out this collectible are trailers for all V Rockys, Rocky TV spots, and a booklet. Collect all five in a shiny red box. Yo!

WARNING: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS FROM HERE ON IN

ROCKY II-***1/2/*****
"I was wondering if you wouldn't mind marrying me too much." With The Italian Stallion's unique proposal to Adrian begins Rocky II, regarded by some as better than its predecessor. I feel it's a good follow-up undermined by television dramaturgy and ugly colours (as opposed to Rocky's merely drab ones), not to mention a questionable motive for a rematch between Balboa and Creed (Creed's pride is hurt by the folk-worship of Rocky, who technically lost their first fight). Meredith and composer Conti are in fine form, though, expanding on their earlier work in unexpected ways. Contributing a certain pall to MGM's gift-set version of Rocky II is its lack of anamorphic encoding--this is their original DVD release, right down to the flipside full-frame presentation, repackaged. Luckily, the print used to strike the 1.85:1 and 1.33:1 transfers was in great shape. The Dolby Surround audio brings spark to the music. Extra: trailer

ROCKY III-***/*****
Rocky III has one moment of genuine terror that makes it all worthwhile: between rounds in his first bout with merciless Clubber Lang (Mr. T at his least lovable), Rocky utters, "He's too strong." Up until this third entry, that's the one thing the series wanted for: a truly menacing antagonist. The film is also pointed about the commercialization of both Rocky and Rocky, how each is all-too-willing to leave noble thrift behind. But let's call a spade a spade: this ain't no Rocky movie, foo', it's a glorified Mr. T vehicle; and by this point, it's getting difficult to muster interest in Rocky's rigorous training (here, he's managed by "The Count of Monte Fisto" himself, Apollo Creed), especially since the outcome is always the same and never much resembles an actual boxing match. The 1.85:1 anamorphic DVD is average; meanwhile, the accompanying Dolby Digital 5.1 soundmix pulls too many punches (no pun intended; ah, who am I kidding?) in the surround department. Extra: trailer

ROCKY IV-**1/2/*****
If there's a defining cinematic portrait of the eighties, it might be Rocky IV. Filled to the brim with MTV flashback montages (Rocky's training sequence is a full-blown music video this time out), the iconography of excess (a Short Circuit-style robot that waits on visitors to the Balboa estate), and cold war paranoia (it wasn't enough for well-oiled Russian monster Ivan Drago to clean Apollo's clock: he had to kill him). Not a good film per se, but a valuable cultural artifact. (Aside: Apollo's premature victory dance around Drago as James Brown performs "Living in America" is a sequence worthy of Eisenstein in its assembly, no joke.) If anything, the dated elements are easier to overlook than Rocky's personality transplant (he's suddenly sombre and purposefully wise) and Drago's impossible strength. Like Rocky II, the '98 edition Rocky IV DVD has been recycled for the collection, and it, too, contains (overly edgy) 1.85:1 non-anamorphic and fullscreen options. (What it does not contain, further aggravating purists, are the occasional English subtitles translating the Russkie-speak.) Unlike Rocky II, Rocky IV is in DD 5.1, and the LFE actually has something to do, albeit insubstantially compared to today's sports films. Extra: trailer

ROCKY V-**1/2/*****
Rocky V represents what is sometimes called "the fallacy of the sequel," in that it invalidates the previous film's happy ending. Here, Rocky is introduced alone in a locker room right after defeating Drago, shivering from the onset of irreversible brain damage. It's a sad, dark moment, and the only thing more painful to watch is the unintentional humour that follows: Rocky returns home from the former Soviet Union to find his son (now played by Stallone's real-life offspring, Sage) significantly older than when he left; Mickey, seen in fabricated flashbacks, also looks wrinklier than he should, and has a newly sentimental disposition; and Rocky's bankruptcy inspires him to pull fifteen-year-old outfits out of mothballs and Adrian to reclaim her job at the pet store. (Aside: this is Shire's best turn in the role.) For nostalgia's sake, Stallone even retained the services of Rocky's John G. Avildsen, from whom he took the directorial reins on numbers two through four, yet it all feels phony, and Burt Young's Paulie finally crosses the line into repugnance. Additionally, the satirical jabs at Don King types as Rocky takes an untamed boxer under his wing go over like lead balloons--and border on racist. As anticipated, Rocky V is the best-looking DVD of the bunch (again, 1.85:1 and 16x9-enhanced), despite Avildsen's minimum-focus shooting style. At loud volume, the Dolby Surround (3.0) soundtrack gets bass-heavy, if never very enveloping. Extra: trailer

SIDEBAR: TV in Rocky movies
Watching an entire franchise of films back to back, you begin to notice motifs. Apart from the Rocky series' obvious trends (the horizontal scrolling of the opening title, for instance), I began to realize that the only thing they ever show on TV in Rock's Philadelphia is news pertaining to The Italian Stallion himself or his next competitor. Even Apollo Creed is only made aware of Ivan Drago when the channel he's watching out by the pool happens to switch to a live press conference about the Commie beefcake's arrival--and his desire to meet Rocky in the ring, natch.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening