C'est l'œil du tigre, le frisson de la photo de contact homo-érotique.

Before anyone cries foul that I’m skipping “Rocky” and “Rocky II” and jumping into the series with the third movie I have to say that I don’t think it would matter. I’ve never been a fan of boxing but I’ve really enjoyed some boxing movies that I’ve seen in the past (“Raging Bull” and “Ali” immediately pop to mind). While boxing is a brutally violent sport that’s basically organized concussion handing outing, there’s something about boxing in the movies that makes it seem almost elegant. Think of all those slow motion shots of people getting punched in the face that you’ve seen over the years. This effect was really brought to bear in last year’s “Sherlock Holmes” reboot when Holmes would plan out his attack on an opponent in slow motion. There’s something beautiful about people getting decked 24 frames per second…but I digress. “Rocky III” is less about the slow mo throw down and more about a redemption story told through a series of music-fueled training montages. Seriously, I’d always heard that the Rocky series was one of the first to really use the training montage device that was so popular in the 80’s but I had no idea that there would be so many. Nor did I know just how much of the movie would be filled with sweaty, oiled up dudes. (Seriously. It’s a lot.)

A Brief Synopsis of “Rocky III“: It’s not like everyone doesn’t already know the plot of the movie that made Mr. T a household name, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve a recap. The movie opens on the 15th (seriously? 15 rounds in “Rocky II” and no one threw the “Bullshit!” flag? Ok.) round of Rocky’s fight with Apollo Creed from “Rocky II.” As everyone knows, Rocky wins and becomes the heavyweight champion of the world. We then get treated to the first of many, many montages. This one deals with all the set-up fights Rocky has in the next five years during his reign as the champ. All the while, in the shadows, Mr. T (as Clubber Lang) is gathering his T Rage as he wishes that he could be the star of the musical montages instead of Sylvester Stallone. Fast forward to Philadelphia in “present day” where a statue of Rocky is being dedicated at the top of the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (where, in real life, the statue stood until a controversy erupted and the statue was moved around the city to different locations depending on whether or not Sly Stallone was popular at the time). During the ceremony, Mr. T shows up and begins yelling at the champ in regards to his status as a chump and whatnot. While Rocky wants to take on the young upstart his 800 year old trainer Mickey (played by 806 year old Burgess Merideth) thinks that the fight is  bad idea and wants no part of it. Rocky resists until Mr. T invites Adrian over to his place so she can be with a real man…at which point the Italian Stallion loses his cool and accepts the fight with Clubber. Mickey still doesn’t want to train Rocky for the fight and under some intense cross examination from Balboa (who constantly sounds like he’s either really drunk or just kinda slow) admits that all of the title defense fights that Rocky’s had in the past 5 years were with handpicked boxers that everyone knew he could easily defeat. SHOCK! HORROR! Boxing is rigged! Rocky, determined to defend his good name against the young upstart, decides to train in a fancy gym full of women who want to kiss him and guys who want to watch him train…because that’s not weird. He’s selling merchandise and flexing for the cameras during another music montage while Mr. T is seen training in a room that looks like the attic from “Flowers for Algernon.” Needless to say, when fight night rolls around, Rocky gets his ass handed to him…after Mickey has a heart attack right before the fight. Rocky comes out of the ring, a beaten man, just in time to rush to the Penguin’s bedside before he succumbs to death by heart attack…or a broken heart, depending on how you like your allegory. Broken, confused and without a 1960’s Batman villain to train him, Rocky rides around the city looking at all the landmarks to his now tarnished career. How can there be a bronze statue of him if he’s such a failure? How can Mickey’s gym have closed even though we’ve not seen Mickey in the gym for the entire movie? It’s almost too much for Balboa until an old friend steps out of the shadows at Mickey’s gym to offer to train Rocky for a rematch against BA Baracus…I mean Clubber Lang. Yes, Apollo Creed will train Rocky in the ways of boxing in exchange for “one favor” from the champ that he’s going to withhold from the audience until the last minutes of the film but that we all already know is a private rematch against him. Adrian, Rocky, Apollo and Rocky’s racist brother-in-law Paulie head for LA to train for the rematch. Paulie spends most of his time waffling between Italian-American stereotype and maker of derogatory comments about African Americans while Adrian, Rocky and Apollo train up for the big fight using the best gym equipment of all…the music montage. It’s at this point in the movie that things get a little, well, homo-erotic. There are scenes of sweaty, oiled up Rocky and Apollo in all kinds of fun situations. Dancing in the mirror! Running on the beach! Wrestling in the surf! Walking out of a screening of “Love Story”! (maybe I’m getting that one wrong) But seriously, it’s the closest to the old gladiator movies (referenced in the title of this post) that we can get without crossing the line. At one point, Rocky is wearing a half tank top that plays more as a sports bra than a boxing outfit. Way to be progressive, 1982 Sylvester Stallone! Needless to say, Rocky learns a whole new style of fighting (at one point Paulie claims that Apollo is trying to train Rocky like a “colored fighter” which makes no sense since his last big opponent was Apollo, who’s also African-American). On the night of the big fight, Rocky faces the fear that’s been haunting him since his first fight with Clubber and finds a way to beat Mr. T. Basically, his strategy comes down to one, simple tenant of boxing: rope-a-dope. Think about it, Rocky’s entire strategy, the thing he seems to have learned while away in LA that helps him defeat Clubber Lang in the second go round is simply “Let him punch himself out.” Really? That’s what Carl Weathers spent 1/3 of the movie training you to do with his wind sprints on the beach and laps in the pool? The secret is just “let that guy hit you in the face so many times that he gets tired of hitting you in the face”? In the end, that’s what Rocky does…and then knocks him out. The movie closes with Apollo and Rocky alone in the gym with Apollo ready to cash in on that one favor he made Rocky promise to when he agreed to train him. That one special favor that’s just between the two of them that no one ever has to know about. Rocky agrees and the two fighters head for the showers…I mean ring, they head for the ring.

Why is it a PCBS? The Rocky franchise is the stuff of legend. With the original movie made on a shoestring budget and written by a young Sylvester Stallone and the sequel raking in enough money to be the highest grossing sequel of all time (until “Empire Strikes Back” came out the next year), it’s not hard to see why a Rocky movie made it onto my list of must see movies. If the movies lack in substance, they make up for it in iconic imagery and sound. Who doesn’t know that image of a sweat-suit wearing Balboa running through the streets of Philadelphia only to climb to the top of the Art Museum stairs just as the music swells to a crescendo? If the first movie made the “Rocky Theme” must-own music for athletes in training, then “Rocky III” made  Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” the next song on that mix tape. Scenes from Rocky are the stuff of parody legend with send ups in pop culture stalwarts like “The Simpsons” and “Hot Shots” leading the way. How many times has someone you know shouted “Adrian!” after completing a big challenge or raised their arms in “Rocky” triumph after reaching the top of almost any staircase? The Rocky movies are credited with launching the careers of Mr. T, Hulk Hogan, Dolph Lundgren and Bridgette Nielsen not to mention what it did for Stallone himself. They won Oscars, broke box office records and unleashed “Eye of the Tiger” on an unsuspecting nation. What more do you want?

How does it look in the rear view mirror? Upon reflection, “Rocky III” feels like a perfectly 80’s movie. It’s structured as an American comeback story (our favorite kind) where good triumphs over evil and all is put right with the world in a single act. “Rocky III” takes place before Rocky becomes the All-American icon that he ascends to in “Rocky IV” (where he fights the evil Russians who dared to kill Apollo in the ring) but after the sappy everyman story of “Rocky” and “Rocky II” (kid fights his way up from the streets to get a chance at the champ only to lose the first time but finally grab the brass ring in the end). I’ve always been a big advocate of the idea that it’s more interesting to watch someone “becoming” than it is to watch them “be” (see “The Matrix” vs. “The Matrix Reloaded” or “Spiderman” vs. “Spiderman 2”) but the trajectory of the Rocky films seems to avoid that pitfall…at least in the first three. Yes, it took two films for Rocky to become the heavyweight champion of the world but the real victory of the first movie is in his personal accomplishments and the second was his actual victory in the ring. The third movie examines the idea that his post championship life was flawed due to over management and shoddy promotion. It shows the ride that Rocky takes from the heights of his championship in “Rocky II” to the depths of despair and back again.

Final Thoughts: Does this movie make me want to watch the rest of the Rocky series? Well, no. I mean I feel like I understand the events and message of the first two movies even if I’ve only seen Stallone punching cow carcasses on VH1 “I Love the 70’s” re-runs and the later movies seem to devolve into even more outlandish stories of death in the ring and more ridiculous opponents (I believe in the last movie, “Rocky Balboa”, Rocky fought the entire Philadelphia Flyers starting lineup). As as kid I was never really in to things like WWF (which my sister and brother-in-law became fans of for a brief time in the early 2000’s) or ultra violent 80’s action movies but I can definitely see the appeal of this arc of the Rocky saga. There’s something uplifting about seeing someone else who’s beaten down reach deep within themselves to achieve a goal, no matter how ridiculous that goal is. It’s also easy to see how this performance as a caricature of Muhammad Ali helped Mr. T to become a star (not to dwell on my “A-Team” post, but I did read that it was this performance as Clubber Lang that spurred NBC execs to build the show around Mr. T’s unique range). It’s a classic story of redemption told through the eyes of a classic 80’s character. I was fully expecting the ghost of Mickey to show up at the end of the film and tell Rocky that he’d done him proud. Even when everyone had stopped believing in Rocky, we all knew that he still had the eye of the tiger for one more fight….or 4 more fights, depending on the sequels you wish to count. (“Rocky VII: Rocky vs. a Bear!”, “Rocky VIII: Rocky vs. Bizzaro Rocky!”, “Rocky IX: Rocky vs. the Harlem Globetrotters!” and of course, “Rocky X: Rocky vs. Death in a game of Chess”)