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Feb. 7th, 2011 11:53 pmWatched "Rocky" tonight for the first time in I don't know how long, and wow. It's hard to remember sometimes just how good this movie was, and for that matter, still is.
Self-respect is important - if you can't look your reflection in the eye, how are you supposed to get anybody else to respect you? And everybody in this movie is struggling with being able to do just that.
Rocky grew up wanting desperately to be Rocky Marciano. Instead, he had to settle for becoming Rocky Balboa, wasting his potential against one stumblebum after another when he's not being a blunt object that a loan shark uses to shake down people who are being too slow to pay off their debts. He doesn't think he has what it takes to go the distance against Apollo, but he's got to try if he wants to ever be able to face himself again.
Adrian never had any. Her mother always told her that because she wasn't pretty, she needed to try to be smart, and Paulie's abuse has ground her down to the point where she can't believe that anybody - even somebody with as little going for him as Rocky has - could possibly want her.
Mickey could have been somebody, but without a manager his boxing career never went anywhere. He has some respect, because he knows he could have gone far if he'd had a manager with any business savvy to match his skill with his fists, but he wound up having to settle for running a gym and trying to keep the kids who work out there from making his own mistake.
Paulie is a miserable sonofabitch. He hates himself, so he can't like anybody else, and who can call somebody like that a friend? And the fact that nobody likes him makes him hate himself even more, and so it goes.
Most people forget that Rocky loses the fight, but he fails in a way that we and he can respect. At the end of fifteen rounds he's still standing, and the woman he loves is at his side. That's what makes him a champion.
Self-respect is important - if you can't look your reflection in the eye, how are you supposed to get anybody else to respect you? And everybody in this movie is struggling with being able to do just that.
Rocky grew up wanting desperately to be Rocky Marciano. Instead, he had to settle for becoming Rocky Balboa, wasting his potential against one stumblebum after another when he's not being a blunt object that a loan shark uses to shake down people who are being too slow to pay off their debts. He doesn't think he has what it takes to go the distance against Apollo, but he's got to try if he wants to ever be able to face himself again.
Adrian never had any. Her mother always told her that because she wasn't pretty, she needed to try to be smart, and Paulie's abuse has ground her down to the point where she can't believe that anybody - even somebody with as little going for him as Rocky has - could possibly want her.
Mickey could have been somebody, but without a manager his boxing career never went anywhere. He has some respect, because he knows he could have gone far if he'd had a manager with any business savvy to match his skill with his fists, but he wound up having to settle for running a gym and trying to keep the kids who work out there from making his own mistake.
Paulie is a miserable sonofabitch. He hates himself, so he can't like anybody else, and who can call somebody like that a friend? And the fact that nobody likes him makes him hate himself even more, and so it goes.
Most people forget that Rocky loses the fight, but he fails in a way that we and he can respect. At the end of fifteen rounds he's still standing, and the woman he loves is at his side. That's what makes him a champion.
