Rocky V is the franchise's most ambitious sequel and its most unsuccessful, a film of admirable intentions and real failures that represents the series' most significant creative miscalculation before its eventual rehabilitation in Rocky Balboa. John G. Avildsen's return to the franchise, sixteen years after directing the original, was intended as a return to the gritty realism and character depth that made the first film great, a deliberate rejection of Rocky IV's mythic excess in favour of a more grounded and emotionally honest story about the cost of Rocky's career and the difficulty of life after the ring. The intentions are admirable. The execution is not. Rocky V is a film that understands what it wants to be and cannot find the means to become it, a work that gestures toward tragedy without achieving it and that ends with a street fight that undermines everything it has been trying to say about the futility of violence.
At a Glance
Director: John G. Avildsen
Runtime: 104 minutes
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Sage Stallone, Tommy Morrison
Release: 1990
Critics Rating: ★★ (2/5 stars, well-intentioned but unsuccessful)
Audience Rating: ★★ (2/5 stars, the franchise's low point)
Review Breakdown
Plot
Returning from the Soviet Union with brain damage that prevents him from fighting again, Rocky discovers that his accountant has stolen his fortune and that he and Adrian must return to the old neighbourhood with nothing. Rocky takes on a young fighter named Tommy Gunn as a protege, investing in him the attention and energy that his own son feels he is being denied. When Tommy is seduced away by a corrupt promoter and publicly humiliates Rocky, the film resolves its conflict with a street fight that is the franchise's most narratively incoherent conclusion. The central concern, the relationship between Rocky and his son Robert, is the film's most interesting element, but the Tommy Gunn subplot overwhelms it, and the resolution contradicts the film's own argument about the futility of fighting.
Characters
Stallone plays the character's diminishment with a conviction and vulnerability the film around him does not always deserve, and his scenes with his real-life son Sage, playing Rocky's son Robert, have a warmth and feeling that gives the picture its most emotionally honest moments. The relationship between Rocky and Robert is the film's greatest missed opportunity. Tommy Morrison's Tommy Gunn is the film's most significant casting weakness, a character of adequate physical presence and almost no depth whose arc from protege to antagonist is handled with a superficiality that makes his betrayal feel like a plot convenience rather than a credible development.
Tone
Avildsen attempts to return the franchise to the gritty realism of the original, and the South Philadelphia setting is used with a specificity and respect that recalls the first film's most effective sequences. But the Tommy Gunn subplot pulls the picture toward a more conventional sports drama register that sits uneasily with the more intimate Rocky and Robert storyline, and the street fight climax abandons the film's more interesting concerns entirely.
Meaning / Themes
The film's most interesting thematic concern is the question of what Rocky is without boxing, of how a man defines himself when the thing that defined him has been taken away. The parallel between Rocky's investment in Tommy and his neglect of Robert is the picture's most coherent thematic statement. The failure to resolve this theme with any dramatic intelligence is the film's most significant creative failure.
Direction
Avildsen's direction is more grounded and patient than Stallone's work on the middle entries, with a stronger command of the domestic sequences. The South Philadelphia sequences have a texture and specificity that recalls the original's most effective filmmaking. The street fight climax is the film's directorial failure, a sequence that abandons the more interesting concerns in favour of a crowd-pleasing resolution the film's own thematic logic cannot support. Bill Conti's score returns with a warmth and familiarity that suits the more grounded register.
Cultural Reception
Rocky V was a commercial disappointment on its release and the franchise's most critically dismissed entry to that point. Its reputation has not improved significantly in the decades since, and it is now most frequently discussed as the franchise's low point and as the creative miscalculation that made Rocky Balboa's eventual rehabilitation of the character feel necessary.
Who Should Watch
Rocky fans will find it essential viewing as a franchise entry, approached with significantly tempered expectations. The Rocky and Robert storyline is worth seeing, and Stallone's performance in the film's more emotionally demanding scenes is as committed as ever.
Final Verdict: The franchise's most ambitious sequel and its most unsuccessful. The Rocky and Robert storyline is the series' most interesting dramatic concern since the original, Stallone's performance is as committed as ever, and Avildsen's return to the franchise's realist roots is admirable in intention. But the Tommy Gunn subplot overwhelms the more interesting material, the street fight climax contradicts the film's own thematic concerns, and Rocky V ends as a film that understood what it wanted to be and could not find the means to become it.
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