As nostalgic as this may be, it's probably necessary for no one but the man who made it. "Rocky Balboa" is about a 50-year-old boxer's last shot at glory, but it clearly represents the 60-year-old Sylvester Stallone's attempt to climb back in the ring after a career that has dwindled into inconsequence in the past decade.
Can you blame him for resurrecting his signature character? Where most aging jocks dust off their trophies, Stallone dusts off his training montage: the beef-carcass punching bag, the run up the museum steps. It's shameless, heartening, and fairly sad; the cinematic equivalent of a toupee that doesn't convince.
The law of sequels requiring one sacrifice per installment, everyone from the first "Rocky" is dead now except for the title character (Stallone) and his pal Paulie (Burt Young). This doesn't stop the ghost of Adrian from floating through, played by Talia Shire in sepia-tone clips from the earlier movies, or Rocky from tending her grave religiously. (That business about the crippling brain damage in "Rocky V"? Fuhgeddaboudit .)
Rocky runs a successful restaurant named after his dead wife; every night he poses for pictures and tells old stories. Philadelphians hail the Italian Stallion on the street but also take him for granted: He's a beloved cartoon. This chafes his yuppie son Rocky Jr. (Milo Ventimiglia), embarrassed of his pop and tired of living in his shadow, and it bugs Rocky, too.
It's a fertile subject for a movie -- the vanity and anxieties of an aging athlete -- but "Rocky Balboa" wants no part of it. Instead, the hero decides to start training again, spurred by a much-discussed computer simulation on TV that pits a young digital Rocky against current heavyweight champion Mason "The Line" Dixon (Antonio Tarver). The bout shows Balboa winning, and sometimes that's all an old man needs to start dreaming.
