Creed review: Fresh director reins in Stallone

Another crowd-pleasing tale of an underdog's rise and his bond with an ageing mentor, Ryan Coogler's Creed does just enough in handing off the myth of Rocky Balboa to a new character and a new generation to earn a points victory.

It's a strange film in many ways, wrestling with a mythology that stretches right back to Sylvester Stallone's 1976 breakthrough with Rocky, and prone to overdoing the broad strokes, even while the grace notes glow.

The focus is Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan), the illegitimate son of Rocky's initial adversary for the world heavyweight title turned friend, Apollo Creed. Orphaned when his father died in the ring – courtesy of one of the ludicrous, excessive scenes that dotted 1985's Rocky IV and other sequels in the series – and subsequently losing his mother, Adonis throws in a corporate career to pursue boxing, leaving Los Angeles to relocate to Philadelphia in the hope that Rocky will train him.

First seen in the darkened Adrian's, the unassuming South Philadelphia restaurant named for Rocky's late wife, Stallone's pugilist has a thick neck, sculpted cheekbones and a narrow mouth. His face has a slightly unnatural look, which suits both the character of a former professional fighter and a 69-year-old movie star. Rocky has no connection to boxing and little sense of the future, which naturally means that he's drawn back to training Adonis.

This is the seventh film to feature Rocky Balboa, although Stallone has focused on his daft mercenary franchise The Expendables in the years since his last effort, 2006's Rocky Balboa. It's the first instalment Stallone neither wrote nor directed, handing over to the young African-American filmmaker Ryan Coogler, who with Jordan as his lead made a terrific debut with the 2013 independent drama Fruitvale Station.

Jordan, who got his start as a child actor on television's The Wire, has a natural charisma that is undercut by unfulfilled anger and swathes of self-hate. Moments of swagger and rage feel genuinely connected in his performances. Adonis silently rails against his unknown dad, fighting to prove something he can't define, and it's typical of Coogler's approach that he references the issue of absent African-American fathers while setting up a plot point for a blockbuster.

The screenplay by Coogler and Aaron Covington ties together a little too neatly at times, whether it's Adonis' relationship with his new neighbour, an experimental R&B/pop artist named Bianca (the focused Tessa Thompson) or his sudden elevation to prominence when his initial fight gets him a light heavyweight title shot with an English champion, Ricky Conlan (Tony Bellew​), who in a note of authenticity needs a payday bout before doing prison time.

Coogler has a feel for the textures of boxing gyms and their often doleful inhabitants, but there's nothing as pungent here as the story Rocky's wizened trainer, Mickey (Burgess Meredith), tells in the original film about fighting an opponent who had a thumbtack in his glove. The film nods to the serious, but drifts back to the rousing and triumphant. Rocky's trembling hands, seen in 1990's Rocky V and suggestive of permanent impairment, are steady now, with a more conventional medical subplot.

But there's only so far you can alter a series such as the Rocky pictures without tarnishing their broad appeal. Acknowledging what needs to be included, Coogler gives the obligatory training montages a welcome dry humour, and he impressively shoots one of Adonis' early fights in a single take spanning several rounds. A baffling scene where Adonis spars amid a parading inner-city dirt bike gang is the filmmaker's one misfire.

The best thing Coogler does is rein in Stallone, an actor who can quickly succumb to florid melodrama despite his proud machismo. The perpetual hint of mumbling in his voice suits an ageing, lonely man and he acquits himself honourably as Rocky's watchful, polite pessimism slowly clears as he works with Adonis.

"It ain't gonna come overnight," Rocky tells his charge at the beginning of their professional relationship. But that's invariably what happens in boxing films – a little bit of skip-rope makes for a vastly improved fighter ready for the inevitable climactic confrontation. Bill Conti's famous fanfare from the original Rocky lurks, waiting to blare, but it's the small touches that actually ring true and pull the series back closer to where it began. In Creed, the hardest blows are felt outside the ring.