A nobody boxer named Rocky fights to go the distance with the heavyweight champ. This classic underdog sports pic is inspirational and fun. But there are aggressive sensual moments here—along with the drinking, smoking and heavy pummeling—that you may not remember.
Rocky Balboa can sense that he’s close to becoming little more than a bum from the neighborhood.
It’s not that he’s a bad guy. Rocky’s actually a sweet-tempered individual who likes people and looks out for back-alley strays and misguided kids. But he’s definitely more of a hapless underdog than anything else.
Rocky is a 30-year-old club fighter. And that means that he’s right on the edge of aging out of whatever boxing career he’d ever hoped for. He’s still got the bulk and muscle, but he can sense the club-owners’ sneers as they look at him.
He doesn’t make much money boxing, that’s for sure. But Rocky can scrape together a few bucks as low-level muscle and debt-collection for a local loan shark. And he takes on those tasks as the need arises. It’s not a tough job for a big ol’ palooka like him, but there’s absolutely no future there.
So after hustling for a couple nickels to rub together, Rocky always lumbers back to his small apartment—a one-room hole filled with broken-down furniture and empty beer bottles—and talks to his pet turtles, Cuff and Link, about a happier future that might someday come.
Rocky is kinda hoping that part of that sunny tomorrow might just include Adrian, a shy local girl. She’s the sister of Rocky’s good friend Paulie. Whereas Paulie is loudmouthed and slovenly, Adrian is quiet and kempt. Paulie is generally drunk and profane. Adrian is demure and mild. (It’s hard to believe that the two siblings came from the same family.)
Rocky is pals with the one and would love to be so much more with the other. But because of Adrian’s timid nature, that seems like a tall ask.
If only something, something could change, Rocky bemoans with Cuff and Link. But that just don’t seem likely.
However …
With the advent of 1976 and the 200th anniversary of the good ol’ U.S.A., there are tons of Bicentennial celebrations and observances slotted throughout the year. And on New Year’s Day in Philadelphia—the birthplace of American independence—the main event features none other than the heavyweight champion of the world, Apollo Creed, and his No. one contender, Mac Lee Green. The papers and fight promoters have been ballyhooing this big heavyweight battle for months. And out of the blue Apollo’s opponent up and breaks his hand.
If they cancel, it’ll be a disaster. And Apollo will have squandered all the press time and money that went into it. But not a single heavyweight contender will step up to fill the card with only five weeks to prepare.
That, however, is when Apollo comes up with a brilliant idea: He’ll make the fight into a publicity stunt worthy of the occasion. They’ll give an underdog fighter a million-to-one shot. We’ll give a local Philadelphia boy a chance at the greatest title in the world … on this country’s biggest birthday! Apollo shouts.
After scouting the fighter registries, they finally land on a local nobody because of his nickname alone: The Italian Stallion. It’s perfect, the heavyweight champ crows. Apollo Creed meets the Italian Stallion. Sounds like a monster movie!
So they send out word to get this unknown fighter on board. What’s his real name?
Rocky Balboa.
As mentioned, Rocky is a good guy who looks out for others. He picks a drunken man off an icy street where he’s passed out, for instance, and he takes the man into a warm building. He also spots a young girl hanging out on the streets with some older boys and protectively walks her home—talking along the way about making better choices and the sting of a bad reputation.
Rocky and Adrian eventually establish a relationship, and the two are quite devoted to one another. Rocky stands up for her on several occasions and apologizes when he realizes that his words may have hurt her. When Rocky badmouths himself, Adrian makes it clear that she believes in him. Rocky also invites Adrian to stay at his little apartment (giving her his only bed) when her brother, Paulie, becomes verbally abusive.
Rocky fights in a dingy fight club that features a large portrait of Jesus on the back wall. When Rocky goes out to fight, Adrian closes her eyes in what appears to be a silent prayer for him.
Paulie makes several crude comments about Adrian’s sex life—at first crassly complaining about her lack of one and later berating her about having one and being broken for losing her virginity.
Rocky invites Adrian into his apartment and strips down to a white tank top that showcases his muscular arms. He then talks to Adrian and slowly backs her into a corner as she expresses her discomfort with being alone with him. Even though the shy woman repeatedly asks him to stop, he takes off her glasses and hat, noting how pretty she is. And then he kisses her. The kissing becomes mutual and they slide down the wall to the floor while kissing passionately.
After that, Rocky and Adrian become a couple—a sexually active couple, the movie suggests. We don’t see any other sensual interludes, but they do hold hands and kiss several times in public settings. (Though Rocky makes it clear to Adrian and to us that there’s “no fooling around” during training. “Women weaken legs,” Rocky’s trainer warns him.)
Rocky opens someone’s gym locker that decorated with several pictures of women, some in bikinis. He talks to a young girl about the dangers of getting sexually active with older boys.
This is a boxing movie, so there’s plenty of pounding and smashing blows landed in the fights we see. Rocky is headbutted in one low-level fight, which bloodies his nose and cuts his brow open. He gets angry and pummels the bloody man to the canvas.
In his fight with Apollo Creed, the seasoned champ dances around and snaps Rocky’s head back with punch after punch. Rocky fights back with crushing body blows, and he breaks Apollo’s ribs with one. (The announcer notes that the fighter is “spitting blood.”) Blood spatters in other instances as well, and by the end of the fight, both men’s faces are badly bruised, bloodied and swollen, and their trunks sport blood stains.
In fact, the swelling on Rocky’s face gets so bad late in the fight that he demands that his corner man cut his swollen eyelids so that he can see. As the man cuts with a blade, blood spurts out.
One of Rocky’s training methods involves bashing frozen sides of beef like a heavy bag. The big slabs of hanging meat sway and the ribs crack. Rocky pulls back with his fists covered with blood.
Rocky’s loan-shark boss gets lightly upset when Rocky doesn’t break someone’s thumbs for late payment. Paulie frequently rants and raves about his sister. He says “I could split her head with a razor” at one point. In another drunken moment, Paulie picks up a baseball bat and smashes a lamp and other items in his living room while screaming and threatening Adrian and Rocky. We see him grab his sister a couple times, and it’s implied that he may have gotten even more physically violent in the past.
Rocky has an old mattress pinned to a wall like a punching bag. We see a large knife sticking out of the mattress’ upper end.
There are two s-words in the dialogue along with uses of the words “h—,” “crap” “d–n,” “a–” and “b–tard.” People also exclaim things such as “screw off,” “stuff it,” and “whore!” God’s name is profaned four or five times (blending God with “d–n”). Someone calls Adrian “retarded.”
People spit out ethnic and racial slurs such as “dago” and “jig.”
People smoke and drink throughout the film. (Beer and shots of booze are both imbibed.) And that includes Rocky, who frequently lights up a cigarette and gulps down bottles of beer. Of all the drinkers and smokers, though, Paulie is the most ravenous. He is perpetually chewing and puffing a cigar, and he carries a bottle of booze in his coat pocket that he repeatedly swigs from. (We see Paulie get sloppy drunk on a couple occasions that are coupled with verbal abuse and violence.)
Paulie is verbally abusive of Adrian on several occasions. In one instance, he picks up a turkey she’s roasting and throws it out into the alley while screaming at her.
When Rocky was first released back in 1976, nearly everyone associated with the film thought it would likely be a bust. Even writer and star Sylvester Stallone was fearful of failure after reportedly attending an early screening of the film and three-quarters of the audience walked out within the first 20 minutes.
But they were all wrong.
Rocky was the little boxing movie that could. Enthusiastic audiences were stirred and inspired, and they stood up in a collective cheer. The film went on to earn a whopping $225 million worldwide—a big number now, and an even bigger number in the mid-70s—it won the Oscar for Best Picture, made Stallone into a household name and was the starting point for a long string of sequels made over the next thirty years.
In fact, Rocky is now widely considered to be the foundational template for modern underdog sports movies, codifying the narrative beats, stylized techniques, and emotional themes that define the genre.
Yep, like its titular, lumbering protagonist, this pic has gone the distance. And even today, the little film that squeaked by with a paltry million-dollar budget holds up pretty well on the big screen.
All of that said, there are some parts of this 50-year-old film that family audiences should thoughtfully consider. The constant smoking, drinking and cussing of its gritty, inner-city Philly setting can sometimes feel a bit much, for instance, especially when it comes to the drunken rants and ugly behaviors of Rocky’s pal Paulie.
And when Rocky corrals his shy and protesting crush, Adrian, into a corner and pushes in for some fevered canoodling, the moment feels, well, uncomfortable. It was staged (and performed) as the romantic awakening of the super-shy Adrian, but that sweaty, pressing moment feels very aggressive when viewed through the lens of today’s sensibilities.
So even though this well-crafted classic packs in some nice lesson-filled jabs—about perseverance, hard work and reaching for goals you might think are beyond your grasp—moms and dads should be mindful of the film’s other thumping content that they may not remember.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
