As strong as the original, and a fitting requiem for the big screen's most popular heavyweight.
There are nice echoes of the first film and the Adrian years, including a visit to the old pet store and an animal shelter. Rocky is still taking in strays, as embodied in the ex-boxer whom he feeds at the restaurant in exchange for a little dishwashing. Whether it's Rocky drawling in dead-pan, "Naw, he ain't dead" about the metaphoric moth-eaten dog he wants to adopt, or Paulie grumbling about "that fake Looney Tune fight" on computers, there are also a lot of nice lines. Stallone wanted Mr. T. and Lundgren to reprise their roles, but you know what? I'm glad they stayed out of the picture. This is one instance where less is truly more, and "Rocky Balboa" is a perfect complement to the original film, as well as a wonderful way to bookend the series.
Video:
Even the screen captures from this film look amazingly sharp. This is the kind of film that was made for Blu-ray, with it's two worlds of color, one dingy and drab, the other bright and glitzy. Blu-ray makes both worlds look great, with impressive details like wisps of smoke or skin pores sharp as if you were standing right there inside the frame. The 1080p picture, mastered in High Definition, is presented in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio that sprawls completely across a 16x9 widescreen television monitor. A sharp, strong picture, with bright, fully saturated colors in the glitz scenes and no loss of detail in the dark or murky scenes.
Audio:
The featured soundtrack is an English PCM 5.1 uncompressed audio that resonates like a ring announcer asking, "Are you ready to RUM-ble?" The bass is booming, the treble is bright and well balanced against the lower decibels, and there's good distribution of ambient sounds across the rear speakers. Additional audio options are English and French 5.1, with subtitles in English, English SDH (CC), French, and Spanish.
Extras:
In the "Woo hoo!" category, Sony went with a 50GB disc on this release, so every one of the extras from the standard DVD appear on the Blu-ray. There's a decent bunch of bonus features, too. For the curious, there's a handful of bonus features (including an alternate ending that proves Stallone picked the right one) and a very short blooper reel that, in keeping with the PG label, "bleeps" out the bad words. In "Skill vs. Will: The Making of 'Rocky Balboa,'" we get a pretty standard making-of feature, but there's enough behind-the-scenes footage and background information to make it worthwhile for fans. The big HBO pay-per-view fight, we learn, was really a pay-per-view event that Stallone got the idea to piggyback off of. After the fight, which had all the banners set up and a real crowd in place (including Mike Tyson, who's given a brief line), they filmed the Rocky vs. Mason Dixon bout. We get more details in "Reality in the Ring: Filming Rocky's Final Fight," which shows Stallone in training. Sixty years old and ripped? Yep. He spent six months getting in shape. Rounding out the features is one on "Virtual Champion: Creating the Computer Fight," which talks about the inspiration for the idea and what it took to make it work.
But the best bonus feature is Stallone's commentary. After watching him tawk like dis for 102 minutes it's a real revelation to be reminded that this guy is one intelligent fellow who points out the things that he was trying to accomplish with the filming. When, for example, Rocky leaves his street-world to meet up with son Robert outside a high-rise building in the city's financial district, Stallone describes the visually "geometric world" that Rocky's entering--one which represents a world of greater structure and constrictures. But like the film itself, his commentary is unpretentious, even when it comes to describing his role behind the cameras. "Directing is knowing what you want, and then trying to convey that to 300 people," Stallone says.
Bottom Line:
Though there were fun moments in several of the sequels, "Rocky" was really the only film in the series that packed a punch . . . until "Rocky Balboa," that is. This film is as strong as the original, and a fitting requiem for the big screen's most popular heavyweight. It's so good that Sage Stallone may one day regret that he declined the chance to play Rocky, Jr. again.
Video:
Even the screen captures from this film look amazingly sharp. This is the kind of film that was made for Blu-ray, with it's two worlds of color, one dingy and drab, the other bright and glitzy. Blu-ray makes both worlds look great, with impressive details like wisps of smoke or skin pores sharp as if you were standing right there inside the frame. The 1080p picture, mastered in High Definition, is presented in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio that sprawls completely across a 16x9 widescreen television monitor. A sharp, strong picture, with bright, fully saturated colors in the glitz scenes and no loss of detail in the dark or murky scenes.
Audio:
The featured soundtrack is an English PCM 5.1 uncompressed audio that resonates like a ring announcer asking, "Are you ready to RUM-ble?" The bass is booming, the treble is bright and well balanced against the lower decibels, and there's good distribution of ambient sounds across the rear speakers. Additional audio options are English and French 5.1, with subtitles in English, English SDH (CC), French, and Spanish.
Extras:
In the "Woo hoo!" category, Sony went with a 50GB disc on this release, so every one of the extras from the standard DVD appear on the Blu-ray. There's a decent bunch of bonus features, too. For the curious, there's a handful of bonus features (including an alternate ending that proves Stallone picked the right one) and a very short blooper reel that, in keeping with the PG label, "bleeps" out the bad words. In "Skill vs. Will: The Making of 'Rocky Balboa,'" we get a pretty standard making-of feature, but there's enough behind-the-scenes footage and background information to make it worthwhile for fans. The big HBO pay-per-view fight, we learn, was really a pay-per-view event that Stallone got the idea to piggyback off of. After the fight, which had all the banners set up and a real crowd in place (including Mike Tyson, who's given a brief line), they filmed the Rocky vs. Mason Dixon bout. We get more details in "Reality in the Ring: Filming Rocky's Final Fight," which shows Stallone in training. Sixty years old and ripped? Yep. He spent six months getting in shape. Rounding out the features is one on "Virtual Champion: Creating the Computer Fight," which talks about the inspiration for the idea and what it took to make it work.
But the best bonus feature is Stallone's commentary. After watching him tawk like dis for 102 minutes it's a real revelation to be reminded that this guy is one intelligent fellow who points out the things that he was trying to accomplish with the filming. When, for example, Rocky leaves his street-world to meet up with son Robert outside a high-rise building in the city's financial district, Stallone describes the visually "geometric world" that Rocky's entering--one which represents a world of greater structure and constrictures. But like the film itself, his commentary is unpretentious, even when it comes to describing his role behind the cameras. "Directing is knowing what you want, and then trying to convey that to 300 people," Stallone says.
Bottom Line:
Though there were fun moments in several of the sequels, "Rocky" was really the only film in the series that packed a punch . . . until "Rocky Balboa," that is. This film is as strong as the original, and a fitting requiem for the big screen's most popular heavyweight. It's so good that Sage Stallone may one day regret that he declined the chance to play Rocky, Jr. again.
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[release]20547[/release]