It's "Rocky IV 2" as "Creed" sequel revisits the 1985 Cold War classic 
 
 Sylvester Stallone and Michael B. Jordan in "Creed II." (Photo: Annapurna Pictures) 
 
 Like a fighter in the eighth round, "Creed II" is a bit wobbly on its feet, but it gets through the fight without throwing in the towel. 
 
 Ostensibly a sequel to "Rocky IV," "Creed II" settles old scores from that 1985 Cold War classic. But the formula it follows is familiar, and its in-ring storytelling lacks punch. 
 
 Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) is heavyweight champ, and he's challenged to a fight by Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu). Viktor is the son of Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren), the Russian beast who killed Creed's father in the ring in "Rocky IV," leading up to the elder Drago's marquee showdown with Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone). 
 
 So there's two generations of storylines at play, which gives "Creed II" plenty to dance with inside the ropes. Yet the buildup to the Creed-Drago showdown is rushed, and "Creed II" spends much of its time with Creed wrestling his inner turmoil and looking to find his fire again. 
 
 There's a meet-up between Ivan and Rocky inside Rocky's Philadelphia restaurant that simmers, but feels undercooked. The dramatic weight is shifted to the younger fighters, yet Viktor is all brute force and no depth, and is underdeveloped as a character. 
 
 "Creed II" is better on the home front, as Adonis and Bianca (the excellent Tessa Thompson) focus on starting a family. Their domestic strife is where the heart of the film lies. 
 
 Director Steven Caple Jr. ("The Land") gives everything a solemn feel — a pall even hangs over the film's marquee training montage — and "Creed II" misses the touch of Ryan Coogler, who directed 2015's "Creed" and coaxed an electrifying performance out of Jordan in this year's "Black Panther." "Creed II" goes the distance, but it lacks the knockout punch of its 2015 and 1985 predecessors. 
 
 agraham@detroitnews.com 
 
 @grahamorama 
 
 'Creed II' 
 
 GRADE: B- 
 
 Rated PG-13 for sports action violence, language, and a scene of sensuality 
 
 Running time: 128 minutes 
 
 Read or Share this story: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/entertainment/movies/2018/11/20/movie-review-satisfactory-creed-ii-settles-old-scores/2015162002/ ||||| “Creed II” affirms two great truths of our pop-cultural moment: that Michael B. Jordan is currently the ascendant American male movie star and that the revived, revised “Rocky” franchise — focused on the trials and triumphs of Adonis Creed, Rocky Balboa’s protégé and the son of his long-departed friend and rival — is the only heroic Hollywood multisequel narrative worth caring about. 
 
 [Read our profile of Michael B. Jordan.] 
 
 A few years ago, before “Creed,” both of those assertions might have sounded ridiculous, but Jordan’s charisma in the title role, Ryan Coogler’s directing chops and Sylvester Stallone’s audience-pleasing instincts turned out to be a revolutionary combination. Tessa Thompson’s blend of regal self-possession and emotional directness as Adonis’s girlfriend, a musician named Bianca, didn’t hurt either. The first “Creed” remade the first “Rocky” — a scrappy ’70s white-backlash melodrama — as a fable of black excellence and embattled masculinity for the 21st century, and immediately joined it in the pantheon of fistic film classics. 
 
 Coogler moved on to direct “Black Panther,” bequeathing “Creed II” to his U.S.C. classmate Steven Caple Jr. Like Coogler at the time “Creed” was released, Caple was in his late 20s when he took the job, with one feature (“The Land”) to his name. That name should get a lot bigger now. “Creed II” is a terrific movie, a boxing picture full of inspired sweetness and shrewd science that honors the cherished traditions of the genre while feeling like something new and exciting in the world. ||||| The first “Creed” movie was a revelation, a surprising burst of life and energy for the “Rocky” story, which had never lost its appeal but had definitely lost its newness. “Creed II” can’t be new this time out, but it does prove that the characters and relationships introduced in the first movie have staying power. People can keep making these movies and no one will mind. 
 
 In pop cultural terms — maybe in art terms, as well — what Sylvester Stallone invented with “Rocky” has had remarkable lasting appeal. Think about this: The first “Rocky” was in 1976, 42 years ago and counting. What lasts 42 years in movies? What franchise was still going on in 1976 that was a big hit, say, in 1934? I can think of nothing. Sure, some concepts might endure — Robin Hood, Tarzan — but we’re talking here about something else. Specifically, we’re talking about a guy playing the same character in a formula movie that conforms to the precise design he devised four decades earlier. 
 
 The only thing that comes close is James Bond, but we’ve had lots of Bonds, and those movies have shown considerable variation over the years. Not so with Rocky movies, and that includes “Creed II.” I can give you the movie’s premise, and if you’ve seen a single Rocky picture, you’ll be able to describe the new movie’s beginning, middle and end without having seen it. 
 
 But how do you explain the silent awe that descends on the audience when Michael B. Jordan, as young Adonis Creed, is floored by a punch? He’s on the mat. He’s in pain. He’s trying to get back up … and the entire audience in the theater is dead silent watching this. Everyone has stopped breathing. Everyone wants him to get up. Everyone, of course, knows he’ll get up. But in the moment, everyone is really worried about it, and that includes me. 
 
 This kind of moment has kept audiences riveted for generations now — from people who were alive in 1976 but are dead now, to people who are so young that they think “Creed” was the first Rocky movie ever made. Is the appeal just the simple thing, that we all want to believe it’s possible to get up off the mat and win? Do we all feel a little beat up and are busting to get in a few punches? Stallone was a genius on one day of his life — when he got this idea — and all the rest has been follow-through. 
 
 The setup for “Creed II” is so obvious it’s almost embarrassing to say it, especially while endorsing it: Thirty years ago, Adonis Creed’s father, Apollo Creed, was killed in the ring by a Russian boxer named Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren), who was subsequently defeated by Rocky Balboa in “Rocky IV.” Well, you’ll never guess, but Drago has been brooding about this for years. And with revenge in mind, he has been training his enormous, vicious son, Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu), in the hope that someday he will meet Adonis in the ring and beat him to death, or close to it. 
 
 And with that, you can imagine the whole movie, except you can’t imagine the emotion of it, at least not enough to feel it. For a movie that features the familiar stations — a fight near the beginning, a fight at the end, one inspirational training sequence somewhere in between — little of it is spent in a gym or in the ring. The movie is largely about Adonis’ relationships, with his mother (Phylicia Rashad), with Rocky (Stallone) and with the girlfriend he hopes to marry, Bianca, played by Tessa Thompson. 
 
 Merely adopting a formula is easy — that happens all too often. Investing in a formula, making it breathe — that’s the challenge, and “Creed II” meets it. A fight doesn’t matter to us unless we care about who’s fighting, and “Creed II” makes us care about this young couple, and about this young man and how he lives with his father’s legacy, and about Rocky, who is played beautifully by Stallone. He plays it simply, with undertones of sorrow, like he’s become a wonderful person just from getting hit all those times. 
 
 MCreed II: Drama. Starring Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone and Tessa Thompson. Directed by Steven Caple Jr. (PG-13. 130 minutes.) 
 
 Related articles ||||| In Creed II, the reasonably entertaining sequel to 2015’s knockout Creed, Michael B. Jordan plays a heavyweight champ who drives himself around in his own car, remains refreshingly unmobbed in the streets of Philadelphia as he makes his way to his favorite Philly-steak joint, and, in a moment of genuine despair, brings his infant daughter to the gym, where he regains his previously lost will to fight. These are the kinds of gonzo dramatic touches you want in a boxing movie, especially in the follow-up to a movie as gorgeously exuberant as Creed was. 
 
 They’re not nearly enough. But at least they’re something. Creed II, directed by Steven Caple Jr. (who has made one previous movie feature, a 2016 skateboarding drama called The Land), is bluntly diverting: You can spend a few hours watching it and feel little pain, other than the occasional sympathetic spasm during the movie’s climactic, and at least semi-thrilling, fight sequence. This time around, Jordan’s Adonis Johnson—who, as you’ll likely remember, is the illegitimate son of Rocky Balboa’s late foe-turned-friend Adonis Creed—is riding high as the heavyweight champ, and he decides to ask Tessa Thompson’s Bianca to become his wife. (She says yes.) Then he accepts the challenge of a new, formidable foe, Viktor Drago (played by heavyweight boxer Florian “Big Nasty” Munteanu), son of Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren). The elder Drago killed Adonis’ father in the ring (as seen in the 1985 Rocky IV). Now, he’s pushing his sullen, beefy kid to follow in his thuggish footsteps. Young Adonis’ trainer and surrogate dad Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) doesn’t like the idea of a Creed-Drago ticket one bit, but Adonis feels compelled to accept. He fires Rocky and retreats to Los Angeles with Bianca to get ready for the big match. 
 
 That’s hardly the nub of it. There are too many trifling ideas, and too much plot, stuffed into Creed II to make it the sleek powerhouse that its predecessor was. There’s some nostalgia value in seeing Lundgren again: Dad Drago is a stern, formidable robot—until he isn’t. He spends most of the movie barking orders at his son, as he supervises the kid’s training at home in the Ukraine. Silent and sullen, Viktor glowers resentfully as his dad—who is also, apparently, his boss at work—yells things at him like, “When you’re done, unload the cement” and “When I say faster, run faster.” Viktor dutifully unloads the cement. Ever compliant, he runs faster. Muneteanu’s Viktor does all that is asked of him, by both Drago and Caple, and wordlessly, he paints a believable picture of a mighty strong dude who not-so-secretly resents living under his father’s thumb. 
 
 Drago the elder also plays cruel mind games on his son, telling him that his mom left the two of them because Viktor just wasn’t good enough. (When Brigitte Nielsen shows up to reprise the role of Ludmilla Drago, she’s an icicle in a dress, and you’ll be super-glad she’s not your mom.) Meanwhile, Adonis has all the love and support in the world—from Bianca, who’s pursuing her music career even as she’s losing her hearing, from the woman who took him in and raised him as her own, Phylicia Rashad’s Mary Anne, and, of course, from Rocky. Watching Stallone in this role is like slipping into a pair of old running shoes, so beat-up and run-down you don’t even bother to untie the laces. He’s as charming and funny as he needs to be, and he gets you through. 
 
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 Similarly, Jordan is also effortlessly likable, though unlike Stallone he is often shirtless. His sculpted masculine beauty is not lost on either Caple or cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau: They film the shiny surface of his chest with proper reverence for the glory of the human form, although their camera is not above a silent visual whisper of “Day-um” now and then. We are, all of us, only human. 
 
 The film, overall, is handsome-looking—a good thing, because no one needs an ugly boxing movie. And the final fight sequence has a brutal, stylish sheen: When Viktor, the forlorn child turned dirty fighter, pops his meaty fist into Adonis’ rib cage, you feel the crunch of these fragile but all-important bones. Creed II is a perfectly OK sequel. There’s some comfort to be found in the predictability of its beats. But only at the end does it muster any real vitality. Any ribs it breaks along the way have healed seamlessly before you’ve even left the theater. 
 
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– "I wanna rewrite history." So says Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) in Steven Caple Jr.'s Creed II, in which the boxer faces a challenge from the son of the man who killed his father, Apollo Creed, in Rocky IV. Good thing he has Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) behind him—or does he? What critics are saying: This new Rocky franchise "is the only heroic Hollywood multisequel narrative worth caring about," writes AO Scott at the New York Times, hailing "a terrific movie … that honors the cherished traditions of the genre while feeling like something new and exciting." He notes "the climactic fight arrives on a tide of feelings and ends with a flood of tears." Creed II "goes the distance, but it lacks the knockout punch of its 2015 and 1985 predecessors," writes Adam Graham at Detroit News. He argues the film sticks too closely to the expected formula. Real life boxer Florian Munteanu is "all brute force and no depth" as Viktor Drago, he adds, though an "excellent" Tessa Thompson powers scenes of Creed's home life. Yes, the film is formulaic. But "investing in a formula, making it breathe—that's the challenge, and Creed II meets it," writes Mick LaSalle. Even if you can predict the plot, "you can't imagine the emotion of it," he continues at the San Francisco Chronicle, describing a theater audience in "silent awe." In short, "Creed II makes us care." Stephanie Zacharek found it "reasonably entertaining," but not on the same level as Creed. "There are too many trifling ideas, and too much plot, stuffed into Creed II to make it the sleek powerhouse that its predecessor was," she writes at Time. Still, Jordan is "effortlessly likable" and "often shirtless," while a "charming and funny" Stallone "gets you through." (Check out more movie reviews here.)