Ok. What are our thoughts on this third installment of the Rocky spin-off? Well, before you up and go see Creed III read this review.
The Good
Let’s start with the positives…Michael B. Jordan did a solid job at bringing this story to the screen in a heart-felt way. His portrayal as a father, husband and mentor was both healthy and refreshing to witness on the silver screen. His co-star, Jonathan Majors was Awesome in this movie. He really captured the true challenged emotion of the character he played (Damian).
As viewers, we really felt the emotion of the story and the complex nature of the relationship between Adonis and Damian, played by Michael B. Jordan and Jonathan Majors, respectfully. Tessa Thompson was also solid as Bianca Creed. Her clear delivery and sincere performance helped to make this world of boxing and family understandable and natural to the audience. Thank you all for your work.
The Bad
Time for the negatives…the only bad thing about this movie is the fact that there are songs that have racial slurs in them playing at the very beginning of the movie, during boxing walk-outs and training montage. It’s really bizarre that a descendant of the African diaspora would choose to…or simply allow self-directed, ethnically disrespectful language to be present in his (in this case) own movie.
The Ugly
This phenomenon of modern-day African Americans actively inserting stereotypical elements of themselves within projects over which they have artistic, creative and/or executive control is unfortunate. Consequently, when we see this take place, it becomes very easy to draw comparisons to the minstrel shows of the post United States Civil War era.
We really enjoyed the complete acting of Johnathan Majors and we were impressed by his scenes.
The Unfortunate Conclusion
We really wanted to enjoy the movie as a whole but it was ruined by racial slurs in the songs used in the movie. The sole decision to use such music turned what could have been a good debut by Michael B. Jordan as a director into yet another embarrassing Creed movie that we all could have done without. Before you go and see Creed III, you should really reconsider. Feel free to reach out with any comments and/or questions. I’ll be happy to elaborate as to why you should skip this one.
“The cinema has the power to make you not feel lonely, even when you are.” -Tom Hanks
