Exodus: Gods and Kings

THIS movie should really be called Exodus: Moses’ Struggle with God.

Early on in the movie, Moses (at the time an Egyptian general), travels to the city of Pithom to investigate complaints about the Hebrew slaves from the Viceroy assigned to the city. They have a conversation in which the Viceroy mocks the Israelites, saying the very name itself means ‘one who fights with God’. Moses corrects him and says it means ‘one who wrestles with God’. Personally I would use the word ‘struggles’ instead of ‘wrestles’, but the point is that that exchange foreshadows Moses’ relationship with God.

As much as the movie is about the suffering and deliverance of the Hebrew people in Egypt, and about how Moses finally finds some measure of happiness in exile with his wife and son, it is more about Moses’ relationship with God–a very personal relationship, almost an equal partnership at times.

Moses is very clearly an unbeliever–he has grown up surrounded by the Egyptian religion with its pantheon of gods (not to mention Pharaohs), and has remained unconverted by any of them. He finally decides to follow God (their relationship, as I mentioned, doesn’t even look like any kind of deity worship we have today) because that’s the only way he sees to save his people.

Moses sets out to save his people from Pharaoh, but his attempts don’t have much impact, while Rameses’ retaliation seems expressly designed to dispirit and demoralise, frighten and terrorise, the Hebrew slaves. Like any clever slaveowner, Rameses avoids doing much real damage to his property, while still punishing them enough to (in his eyes) frighten them into submission.

That it doesn’t work is evident whenever we see the faces of the Hebrews as they observe the injustice. That they persevere in the face of it all seems like the real miracle to me, not the plagues and the cataclysms. Early on in the movie, Moses tells the Viceroy that you can tell a lot about a man by looking into his eyes. When you look at the faces of the Hebrews, it seems as if God is behind their eyes looking out at you.

God in the movie is a wrathful God. A God of vengeance. There are no two ways about it. He cannot coerce men nor preempt their minds, having given them free will. But He can and does preempt the natural order and the natures of the beasts and insects, and causes them to rain down upon Egypt in plague after plague. The punishment is intense, the suffering severe. Moses grows frustrated with it. ‘Who are we punishing?’ he asks. When God acts upon the face of the Earth, his action is like a giant hammer that smashes down upon all, without discrimination.

The final plague is what finally threatens to break Moses’ resolve: ‘No! I cannot be a part of this!’ In a final act of wrath, God reveals that He has heard Rameses’ threat to kill every Hebrew infant, and He will take the life of every first-born child of Egypt, unless they are in a house whose door is marked with the sacrificial blood of a lamb. Of this escape only the Hebrews are warned. Finally, God plans a way to discriminate between His people and their oppressors.

Knowing that there will be a massacre of innocent children is a hard thing to take. Yet the God of the Old Testament has many times been wrathful. He has taken perhaps millions of lives as punishment for evil. The Passover is the first time that He has actually planned out such a massacre with a human general and has chosen who will live and who will die in such a targeted way (well, perhaps since Noah, but then the Ark was also a much cruder means of selecting survivors than what they did for the Passover).

The way that God reveals Himself to Moses is interesting. Before I watched the movie, I heard somewhere that God took the form of a British public schoolboy. This intrigued me because it meant that Ridley Scott subscribed to the idea that God, being eternal, experienced all moments of time (past, present, and future) simultaneously and could thus introduce anachronisms by appearing in one time period as something from a completely different time period.

But ... I probably took that too literally. It didn’t actually happen. Instead I saw something just as interesting, but in another way. God asks Moses who he is, and Moses replies ‘A shepherd’. God says, ‘I thought you were a general? I need someone who can fight.’ As if He is a wartime leader recruiting a general to lead an army on a front. Which of course He is, and which of course is what He needs Moses to do. The portrayal is very, very interesting when you think about how Yahweh, the Hebrew God, started out in the oldest stories as a legendary warrior hero and leader of his people. In some stories, He had once been in the same position that He now wanted to recruit Moses to.

Many times throughout the film, Moses struggles with God, perhaps even chastises Him as being too cruel and vengeful. After four hundred years of watching His people suffer, apparently God has some pent-up wrath. Ultimately though they agree on one thing: the people of Israel need protection and guidance to find their way home.

Man of Steel

IT TOOK me a while to write about Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel (MoS) because I was trying to articulate what it meant to me. And I think I’ve got it: MoS is our generation’s Superman anthem.

Let me explain. The Donner movies* were an anthem of the previous generation: Clark Kent as the Everyman, Superman as the benevolent big Boy Scout. Snyder has reimagined Clark as an outsider trying to find himself, someone who’s a little lost in the world. And a lot of us can relate to that, especially in this post-recession age.

With MoS, Snyder and Zimmer have quite literally given us an anthem for this era: brash, bold, perhaps worlds-spanning. And with it, there’s the wild element of of danger and uncertainty because Clark still doesn’t have full control over his powers, his emotions, and his moral compass yet.

Speaking of moral compass, I honestly don’t have a problem with the way it ended with Zod. There’s precedent for it in the comics, and I felt it was a nod to that. My problem was with the way they used Metropolis as the Kryptonian battleground. And maybe I’m being overly sentimental here, but I would’ve thought that Clark would try his hardest to keep those things happening to densely-populated urban centres, especially Metropolis. But then again, maybe it just goes to show how we’re not in Kansas any more, in terms of who and what this Superman is. It’s a brave new world.

* I count Superman Returns as one of the Donner movies because it explicitly tried to follow that continuity and approach to Superman/CK.

Marvel’s The Avengers

Warning: Minor spoilers. I do references specific scenes from the movie, but nothing major.

HARK, True Believers, and let me tell you a story. It’s a simple story, one of raw power and potential, where Good comes together against Evil and drives it back for another day. It’s the original story of the Avengers, straight from their first appearance in comics.

There came a day (unlike any other), when Loki, the Norse god of mischief, unleashed a series of machinations, starting with a clash between the Hulk and Thor. Other heroes got involved by chance or by fate, figured out what was going on, and finally stopped him. On that day they came together as a team, and the Avengers were born.

Since those original comics came out, there’ve been many iterations of the story. Significantly, there was Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s The Ultimates, the Ultimate Marvel version of The Avengers. It even provided the source material for the enemy alien armada in the movie, the Chitauri. In a way, The Ultimates was the kick in the pants that started the whole Marvel Avengers movie franchise rolling. So given all that history, where does this movie stand?

First of all, its credentials are impeccable. The story has Joss Whedon’s imprint all over it—the snarky humour, the really fun moments, the horror and the Big Bad (and the hints of the Bigger Bad). Oh, and let’s not forget the destruction of, and escape from, the SHIELD base in the beginning—a nod to the destruction of the Hellmouth in the series finale of Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That was awesome

The screenplay is by Zak Penn, who’s done really good work recently—to me, most notably in his new (and returning) show Alphas, which is like a modern, grounded-in-reality version of X-MEN.

The ensemble cast plays really well off of each other, in a way a lot of ensembles haven’t been able to; their egos and personalities, their senses of humour and honour, shine through; and under Whedon’s guiding hand, through all their neuroses and bickering, they keep a laser-like focus on driving the story forward.

The story: there were many moments that were laugh-out-loud funny—e.g. when Captain America shows a bunch of hardened NYC cops why they should take orders from him. There were moments when I cheered—e.g. when Iron Man shows up in Stuttgart to take down Loki. Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark provides the attitude and AC/DC’s Shoot to Thrill provides the soundtrack. Awesome!

On a side note, when they first announced the original Iron Man movie, I was rooting for Leonardo DiCaprio to play Tony Stark. The character was literally based off Howard Hughes (notice how Tony Stark father’s name is Howard) and DiCaprio had proven he could pull off Howard Hughes. But three movies later, I’m solidly in the RDJr camp. He’s proven himself, and not just because of the moments when he’s funny and eccentric, but especially in the moments when he’s dead serious.

As for the characters: I won’t do a headcount (I’ll let Tony Stark do that), but it’s being said that Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner/Hulk provided the heart of the movie. Absolutely true. The wry humour and sarcasm, the world-weary cynic mixed with the eager scientist playing with new gadgets, Ruffalo’s Banner shows us all these sides of the character. As the Hulk, he shows us something almost elemental: rage personified, quick and unexpected as lightning, a force of nature, but ultimately a personality, a man struggling to do what’s right through the thick red haze of anger.

There was plenty of meat in all the characters; there were moments that showed that Joss Whedon gets them all. Take Captain America, Steve Rogers. A man who must feel like he’s suddenly time-travelled 70 years into the future, he’s looking for anything that’ll give him a connection to the past and the present. He doesn’t get most of the pop-culture references spouted off rapid-fire by the rest of the Avengers and SHIELD agents, but when he does, he has one of those ‘A-ha!’ moments that tell him this is still his own world.

Take Tony Stark. What’s the first thing this cynical technologist does when he comes aboard the SHIELD Helicarrier, Nick Fury’s flying fortress and repository of some of the best-kept secrets outside the Vatican? His actions are so quintessentially Tony Stark, they’re almost predictable.

Take the Black Widow. Much of her past is a mystery. In the comics, she’s a lot like a Russian version of Wolverine, given what was done to her by her government. She’s someone who’s trying to make amends; she’s a master spy—clever enough to outwit the god of mischief at his own game. All of these things are hinted at, and shown in her scenes. Every scene she’s given is used to the maximum.

And of course, take Loki. Disgruntled, and carrying a grievance the size of a kingdom, Loki comes to Earth with a plan to take away the world his brother loves and protects. He wants to ‘free’ people from the ‘tyranny’ of freedom—brilliant and twisted; something only Loki’s warped mind could conceive. The size of his ego, and his giant psychotic need for recognition, are such that one after the other, the Avengers and SHIELD big guns profile him and start figuring out his plays. Agent Coulson delivers what I think is the best line in the movie (and that’s saying something) when he explains to Loki why he won’t win.

If there was one character whose essence didn’t come out in the movie, I’d have to say it was Maria Hill. I know a lot of fans were excited to see this relatively new character (in the comics) make the transition to the big screen for the first time, but Maria Hill is literally supposed to have learned spycraft and attitude at the Nick Fury school of badass; she wasn’t really given an opportunity to show that here, maybe given the fact that Agent Coulson seemed to be performing the second-in-command duties in this movie. Oh well, maybe in the next one.

Speaking of Nick Fury’s second-in-command, one character who was rather conspicuously missing from this iteration of SHIELD was Dum-Dum Dugan; especially given that he’d been in the Captain America movie of last year. I guess they would have had a hard time explaining Dugan’s (and then Fury’s) seeming eternal youth (or at least their eternal non-retirement), something they still haven’t explained in the main Marvel comics storyline, as far as I’m aware.

I’ll skip the main plotline and results (the Avengers save the day, what’d you expect), and jump to the delicious little end-of-credits teaser. Let me take a moment here to cackle madly with glee while I tell you, True Believers, that if they carry through with what they’ve shown there (and history says they will), then the Avengers will be going intergalactic, interdimensional, inter-timeline and possibly exploring the boundaries between life and death! *cackle*

Verdict: Loved it. And Long Live Joss Whedon!

The Dark Knight

FINALLY finished watching The Dark Knight. It's just as good as I remember it, from Heath Ledger's performance to the intelligence of the action (e.g. Batman fighting the SWAT team with their rappel lines).

I wanted to talk about a couple of things I noticed that stayed with me ever since my first, aborted, attempt to watch the movie in the theatre. First off, right from the beginning you notice there's a kind of a buzzing background noise--a tone might be the best way to describe it--whenever the anticipation builds up for action that's about to take place. I especially associated this noise with the Joker for some reason. It reminded me of a maddening, insane buzz that's also frightening, hellish.

Coming thus to the Joker--easily the most interesting character in the movie, and rightfully so. The Batman may be a complex creation--and some of that was delved into this time around as well--but in any story with the Joker, he deserves to steal the show. What interested me was--what's the driving force for him? He tells us he just wants to show us that underneath the thin veneer of morality and civilisation, everyone is just as savage as we accuse him of being. He sees civilisation as something that can be pushed over the edge and broken down, leaving the world in ruins.

And of course, the movie shows us the breakdown of civilised life in plenty of ways. The burning fire truck placed by the Joker in the middle of a road at night, the takedown of the helicopter, the hospital and the ferries carrying people across Gotham Harbour, these are all things that are unthinkable in modern cities, in the thick of law and order, and plenty of witnesses. But we see how easy it is to break it all down--how much we trust in each other to do the right thing in everyday life, and thus keep the system functioning. If people started abusing that on a massive scale, it would all crash rather quickly. Is the current financial crisis a good example of that? Probably, but even so, in a more subtle way.

And that's just looking at the movie from the Joker's point of view. What is the Batman thinking all the while he's tracking down fingerprints in shattered shards of bullets, keeping Harvey Dent on the straight and narrow, and scrambling to take out the mob and the Joker on two fronts? He says that he wanted to inspire people; we know he wanted to frighten criminals as well; but Alfred rightly points out that when he started waging war on the mob, he should have expected escalation and casualties.

But if the Batman does one thing and one thing only, he endures. I'm reminded of a scene from the classic Superman: The Animated Series episode where the Joker, come to visit Metropolis, finds Bruce Wayne and Lois Lane on a dinner date in a really high-rise restaurant, and in the course of a scuffle, throws Bruce over the edge of a balcony. He goes to check if Bruce has fallen to his death, and finds him clinging by one hand to the edge of another balcony, some eight or ten floors down. The Joker chuckles, saying, `My, my, aren't we tenacious?' and starts raining machine-gun fire down on Bruce--who quickly scrambles up the balcony ledge and into the offices/apartments below.

Alexander & W.

WARNING: this post (probably) has spoilers for both movies.

I'VE recently found myself borrowing a lot of movies from my local library. I always thought borrowing movies made much more sense than buying, but never had an easy, well-stocked, and convenient library system to use. But now I've just gotten the hang of taking out stuff from the local library system.

Anyway, a pattern has emerged. I've been taking out movies by directors who've released new movies recently. For example, after Burn After Reading came out, I took out and watched the Coen brothers' The Big Lebowsky. Will write about that later, maybe. Right now I want to talk about the titular movies.

When W. was released, it was just totally new to me because I haven't been following upcoming movie news from Hollywood. I just learn about new movies from Roger Ebert's reviews. So I thought that W. seemed like an interesting movie to watch. And as it turned out, I did get to watch it last weekend in the cinema. Definitely worth the ticket money.

Seemingly by chance, I'd watched Alexander recently as well--I'd seen it once already but just wanted to refresh my memory. Had forgotten that Stone had directed it, but after watching W. something just clicked and I found that he was behind both the movies. So now, with the context out of the way, I can explain what I found similar between the two movies and their title characters:

First off, obviously, they both focus on a single person on his journey through life and rise to power. If you put the two of them in parallel and look at it like that, it's a very startling similarity. I don't know to what extent Stone wanted to do that consciously, or just ended up doing it because it's his style, but the similarities are definitely there.

Both their fathers are leaders. Alexander's was Philip, king of Macedonia and obviously W.'s father is an ex-US president. They both have something to prove to their fathers--that they're worthy of leadership. Stone tries to show that neither can take criticism--Alexander blows up at his generals when they question his decisions to marry a foreign woman, to keep pushing on into India; and W. angrily crashes his car when Laura tries to critique one of his speeches.

Another thing I noticed, and I don't know how symbolic this is, is that both have armies of conquest in Asia. Alexander in ancient Persia, and W. pits the US into a war in modern-day Iraq and Afghanistan, not too far away. Their armies probably would have crossed each other's paths several times if they were in the same time period.

Ultimately, Alexander is both a tragic and triumphant figure in history--he brings a taste of civilisation and unity to half the known world, he wants to emulate Prometheus, who brought fire to mankind--but it all falls apart after his death. In W., President Bush and his inner circle are trying to bring democracy to the Middle East--they see themselves as lighting a fire of freedom that will spread throughout the region. So what if they really want to secure a continuous supply of oil? As Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) says of Alexander, 'no tyrant ever gave back so much'.

At the end of the movie, in a dream sequence, we see W. tilt back his head in expectation, trying to catch a baseball that's just been hit, the crowd going wild--but the ball never comes down, and the sky is pitch black. This tells me that we've yet to see the outcome of his tenure.

Of course, we have new information since the movie came out, and it doesn't look too good.

The Monkey King ... er, The Forbidden Kingdom

VERY enjoyable movie. Jackie Chan and Jet Li together make movie magic--I just had to say it--and give the audiences a compelling show. Ironically, Chan and Li both come from this genre of action movies--chop-socky--but they had to do Western-style action movies to achieve Hollywood star power. And meanwhile, the genre was revived by such notables movies as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers.

OK, now that I've had my say, the movie. The hero is the ordinary and likeable kid in Brooklyn (Boston?) obsessed with old kung fu movies, Jason Tripitikas (Michael Angarano, who perfected the ordinary-guy-forced-to-become-a-hero technique in Sky High, another enjoyable movie--sorry, now I've had my say :-). He frequents the old Chinese memorabilia shop around the corner always in the hope of finding another old kung fu classic.

One day he finds an ancient staff of power in the store, and the elderly proprietor tells him that it's waiting for someone to return it to its rightful owner ... a mischievous deity known as the Monkey King. The Monkey King is probably the most interesting character in the movie, although he's absent for most of it. (Indeed I keep thinking of the movie as The Monkey King. Hence the accident-on-purpose title to this post.) The legend goes that he was imprisoned in stone after being tricked by the Bad Guy, who we'll come to in a bit.

Almost as if on cue, Jason gets into serious trouble with some of the neighbourhood thugs. Although the thugs do look like they could be from the cast of West Side Story, they are deadly serious for Jason, who is forced to run for his life, with the staff in his hands by accident.

He's cornered by the thugs, who're about to kill him, but the staff mystically transports him into ... The Forbidden Kingdom ... I guess, a faraway ancient China. He regains consciousness to find that some kindly villagers have taken him in, and finds soon enough that the villages and people of the kingdom are mightily oppressed by the armies of the Jade Warlord, who rules over the Kingdom in the absence of the Heavenly Emperor, and has imprisoned the Monkey King by tricking him into parting with his magical staff.

By chance, Jason is saved from some Imperial soldiers by Lu Yan (Chan), a vagabond who drinks wine all day and swaggers along until he's forced to fight, at which time you get to see some MAD skillz. Recognising the holy staff and taking Jason for a monk who is trying to return it to the Monkey King, Lu Yan takes Jason under his wing and teaches him the kung fu he will need to defend himself. They're joined by Golden Sparrow, a young maiden who has her own reasons to go along with them.

Along the way they meet The Silent Monk (Jet Li), who mistakes Jason for a thief and snatches the staff from him, leading to maybe one of the most anticipated fight scenes in movie history, between Chan and Li. Eventually they learn they're on the same side, and share a good laugh over Jason--`He's not even Chinese!'

Anyway, that's the setup, and these four characters are faced with the quest of returning the staff to Four Elements Mountain and freeing the Monkey King from his stone prison, where he's been for the past 500 years while the Jade Warlord terrorised the Kingdom unchecked.

Now, I won't talk about the quest itself--how Jason is trained by the two martial arts masters, how they survive a desert crossing to come to Four Elements Mountain, or how one of them is treacherously shot in the back by the White-Haired Bride (another staple of old martial arts cinema), and what Jason has to do to save that person. But it's all well worth watching, in the theatre if you can, with friends or a girlfriend (I think).

But I will talk about the Monkey King a bit. He is an unbeatable warrior with his mystic staff of power, and a mischievous spirit, always thumbing his nose at authority--especially the Jade Warlord, who is the Commander of the Imperial Army. This is what arouses the Warlord's hatred of him, and maybe what turns him evil. The motivations of the deities aren't examined in full--probably the movie would become an angst-ridden existential piece--but there's just enough there to leave you wondering what kind of politics they would have had in a heavenly imperial court. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

There's one thing I want to rant about. Apparently the consensus in reviews of the movie is `Great fight scenes, but too much filler'. To me, it was just the right amount and length. I've heard about, and been sceptical of, American audiences' apparent desire for `dumbing down' of movie plots, but this movie has an intriguing plot which makes you care about the characters, wonder about the life and times of the setting, and miss it when Jason gets back to New York, as he must in the end. If you don't know some backstory, how can you fill in the blanks in your head with interesting fantasy? That's part of what makes it fun. It's like these reviewers want a made-to-order story with exactly right amounts of setup and payoff, and no lingering anywhere, in case they're forced to think about a fantasy world (<Deity> forbid).

At one point, understandably, Jason's reaction to finding himself in ancient China is thinking it's a dream. There's a moment slightly after this where it's driven home to him how dangerous the dream is. Lu Yan for once sheds his humorous nature and says to Jason something like, `If you die in this realm, you will be found dead where you came from!' A dire warning in an otherwise light-hearted movie. The mix of light and heavy elements is right.

SPOILER WARNING: There is a spoiler (at least by my reckoning) in the comment below. Scroll down to see it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beowulf

Very impressive movie. I could have sworn in some scenes that the actors were really there, but apparently it's an animated movie, so there's no telling what was there and what wasn't. One thing I was really intrigued by was--you guessed it--Angelina Jolie. Her character appeared fully nude except for some body paint, and nothing got censored--even here in Malaysia. The movie got a PG-13 rating. I might be ranting here a little bit, but it just seems like kids these days don't even have to try to get to see nudity--it's just being handed to them nowadays. I'm happy to report Roger Ebert has noticed this too.

Well, not that I'm a prude--well, maybe I am if I have to see this stuff with kids under 15 or 16.

But yeah, really enjoyed the movie. And now, can't wait for the Dragonball Z movie to come out!

Rocky Balboa

Rocky Balboa is back to his roots in this last movie. The boxing champion of Philadelphia is back in the old neighborhood, looking for meaning in his life after the death of his wife Adrian. He's drifting apart from his son and living in the past, reliving the glory days in the boxing tales he tells the customers in his restaurant, Adrian's.

Rocky leads a lonely life, with exactly two people to call family -- his son Rocky Jr and his brother-in-law Paulie; and his friends and employees at the restaurant his only other human connection. The rest of New York sees him as Rocky Balboa, the Italian Stallion, the local champion. He hears `Yo, Rock!' on the streets -- people asking for autographs.

He befriends a woman who works at a nearby bar. She says he's met her before -- he has trouble remembering until she reminds him he walked her home one night, took a cigarette from her and told her to stop smoking. He remembers her as Little Marie, the girl who shouted `Screw you, creepo!' at him. She wonders why he wants her as a friend; he just needs a friend, someone to keep out the loneliness in his life no one else can stop.

Then, suddenly everyone's talking about a computer-simulated fight between Rocky and Mason `The Line' Dixon, the reigning undefeated world champion, in which the computer Rocky, in his prime, beats the hell out of computer Dixon. Suddenly Rocky is reminded of what he loves doing best, fighting, and wants to start training again so he can do small, local fights. To do this, he has to get a license from the boxing commission in the city. He has passed all their tests with flying colours, but they don't want to give him a license -- they tell him they're watching out for his best interests. Rocky gets emotional, asking the panel at the commission why they have the right to stop a man from following his dreams.

Dixon's managers have another idea -- an exhibition match between their client and Rocky, a match that will get Dixon the publicity he desperately needs -- with no challenger good enough to beat him, boxing fans aren't exactly knocking down the walls to see him, as they tell him. They approach Rocky with an invitation to fight in Las Vegas, leaving him with a dilemma -- should he embrace this chance to go down like a warrior, or pass up the chance to avoid embarrassing himself and the people around him?

From the scene at the commission, and throughout the movie, I kept getting a sense of why Rocky the man, and not just Rocky the boxer, is a champion at heart. His defining quality is to be able to see the people around him fall short, and to inspire them with nothing but his heart and his compassion. His son comes to him and shouts at him, blaming him for overshadowing his life. Rocky's reply cuts straight to the heart of their relationship: he'd held the infant Rocky Jr in the palm of one hand and promised Adrian that he was going to grow into a great man, better than anyone who came before. He'd watched Rocky Jr grow up and it was a privilege, because he was the perfect son. But when he grew into a man, he changed, because he let the people around him tell him what to think and what to worry about. Rocky shows his son the way to be a champion, and it's about getting back up and keeping up the fight no matter how hard you get hit.

Rocky accepts the fight (of course), and we get to see the training again, only this time the goal is not to build the perfect boxer's body: it's to build up all of Rocky's power, so that when he punches Dixon, Dixon should feel as if he's been kissed by a freight train (Rocky's trainer's words, heh).

Then comes the Big Fight, as always. It's one hell of a fight, as always. It pushes you to the edge of your seat and beyond. And in the end, it's not about who wins, but about Rocky, who has the crowd on his side all along. They can feel his champion heart -- they can see it in every punch he throws, and more, every time he gets back up to take more punishment from Dixon.

The first Rocky movie won an Oscar, I think for Stallone's writing. It had heart. The sequels had muscle and youth and energy and flash -- big bang for the bucks. They were enjoyable. But this last movie is enjoyable and has heart -- Stallone has done it again, by going back to the old values. Watch and enjoy.