Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘Rocky’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

"'Cause I was thinking, it really don't matter if I lose this fight. It really don't matter if this guy opens my head either. 'Cause all I wanna do is go the distance."
- Rocky Balboa

At some point or another in our lives, we have dreamed a dream and hoped with every fiber of our being that one day we would get a shot to live that dream. For some folks, this is an everyday occurrence, where morning, noon and night the dream consumes them as they wait for someone to give them their shot at glory. 

Yet often times, that knock at the door, or phone call out of the blue, is rare and for the dream to come to fruition it takes hard work and dedication and a love of your craft that few will ever understand. But there are moments where people are plunged into greatness, and while they are few and far between, we love to see when those moments happen, especially if the person gifted with such an incredible opportunity happens to be an underdog. It is our love of those kinds of stories that fuels an all-time classic motion picture, Rocky. 

Rocky Balboa is well... a nobody. He simply gets through the day by making money collecting debt for low level loan sharks and spends his free time training to be a professional boxer. But even that seems to be a waste of time, because Rocky is undisciplined and while there is raw talent running through his veins, it seems a sheer sense of direction or purpose is missing from his boxing ambitions and his life as a whole. But when the world champion of boxing, Apollo Creed, chooses Rocky for a fight, Balboa is looking at the shot of a lifetime, and a chance to change his life for the better.  ​

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Well simply put, this is a phenomenal film, because everything in this motion picture works. There is not a scene wasted, a moment that isn't perfect and it is a motion picture that will captivate you from beginning to end. The story is as I mentioned earlier, our favorite kind, where we see an underdog be transformed into a hero that we can all relate to in some form or fashion.  

After all, we have all had our moments of lazy like Rocky. We've all worked meaningless jobs that we don't see an escape from like Rocky, the bottom line is that we have all been him or some part of him at one point or another in our lives and it's what makes the character so magical and he is brought to life by Sylvester Stallone in incredible fashion. At no point does it seem like Stallone is acting, this character is completely believable through and through. Of course, the rest of the cast is just as stellar, with acting legend Burgess Meredith stealing the show as Mickey.

Yet while it does a fine job of entertaining you and drawing you in, the film is also inspirational on so many levels. It takes us all back to those moments of doubt we have had in life, or our darkest hours to remind us that at some point things will get better and something wonderful will present itself to us. It's always fantastic when a film can do this much in telling a story and if you don't own this one, it really is time you brought this one home. It's a great one to watch whether your spirits are up or down because there's no way anyone cannot enjoy a film that reminds you to seize the moment when it presents itself, because that moment will never come again.  

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