Michael B. Jordan steps back into the ring and up to the helm with Creed III, which is his directorial debut as well as a reprise of his role as Adonis Creed. Continuing in the tradition begun by 1976’s Rocky, the latest boxing drama centers on an underdog contender, who is fighting — literally and metaphorically — for all he holds dear. These are stories of pride, honor, and masculinity defined by chiseled muscles and bellowed emotional vulnerability. Impressively, Jordan shoulders all of this legacy while delivering another knockout in this franchise.
What’s Creed III about?
Credit: Eli Ade/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures
It might seem the underdog days of Adonis Creed (Jordan) are far behind him. He’s retired as a World Heavyweight Champion. He’s married to rock star/dream girl Bianca (Tessa Thompson). The two live in a glorious mansion in Los Angeles, where they enjoy quality time with his mother (Phylicia Rashad) and the couple’s young daughter Amara (Mila Davis-Kent). Having spent the past three years out of the ring, Adonis has dedicated himself to developing the next generation of boxers, but his comfortable life is threatened when a remnant of his suppressed past resurfaces.
Childhood friend Damian “Dame” Anderson (Jonathan Majors) was once a promising young boxer who seemed destined to punch his way out of Crenshaw and into the big time. Back then, Dame played both protector and mentor to the wide-eyed “Donny,” who wanted to box. But one cruel twist of fate led to 18 years in prison for Dame. Now that he’s finally out, he gatecrashes Adonis’s life, looking not for a handout but a form of payback.
Decades ago, they were brothers. However, as Dame barrels into the scene with a chip on his shoulder and nothing to lose, Adonis is knocked off balance. The two are destined to come blows, and the title of “underdog” will shift from the prison boxer scorned for being “too old” for this young man’s sport to the former champ whose years in cushy retirement have made him “soft.”
Michael B. Jordan cedes the spotlight to Jonathan Majors.
Credit: Eli Ade/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures
An established leading man with dazzling star power, Jordan strides confidently back into the role he originated in 2015’s Creed. Once more, he gracefully balances scenes of internal struggle with the physical drama of the boxing ring. He and Thompson revive their easy yet electrifying chemistry. And it’s an absolute pleasure watching Jordan play doting dad to the spirited Amara, who speaks through sign language and — sometimes — with her fists. In his daughter, Adonis sees a reflection of his own youthful desire for control. Dame brings the dark side of that hunger back in a stirring way.
Dame is Adonis’s foil. Where Adonis is suave, eternally relaxed, and ever-ready with a smile, Dame is tense, a gnarled knot of muscles and trauma, with a smile that twitches like a wonky reflex. Where Adonis favors bespoke suits, Dame wears a battered hoodie. In their big match, Adonis will don brilliant white shorts, signaling he’s the white hat in this showdown, while Dame’s pitch-black shorts flare as if wings of a dark bird of prey. In all these ways, Jordan’s direction paints Dame as Adonis’s shadow. He represents a dark secret long buried, a painful past willfully forgotten, and — most starkly — the path Adonis might have tumbled down with one misstep.
This comparison is clear through crisp visual cues as well as the screenplay by Keenan Coogler, Zach Baylin, and Ryan Coogler. Dialogue between these estranged brothers snaps with those things too terrible, too tender to say out loud. Yet what drives these differences, these stakes, and this bond-rattling resentment home is Majors.
Credit: Eli Ade/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures
The rising star has been steadily building critical praise since his eye-catching role in the sensational 2017 drama The Last Black Man in San Francisco. Out of Sundance, he earned buzz for his unnerving yet captivating lead performance in the bodybuilding drama Magazine Dreams. He’s poised to dominate the MCU as their latest big bad, Kang the Conqueror. And here, in the house that Rocky built, Majors gets to flex his muscles and his range to devastating effect.
As Dame, Majors’s tense physicality radiates a backstory of an adulthood squandered in a cell, where his brute strength was not only a tool of protection but a promise for the life he’d build when he finally got out. The light in his eyes flickers with hope, but in the blink of an eye can turn ferocious. Likewise, his voice can float like a butterfly, then sting like a Mack truck. Even as Dame becomes the villain of this piece, Majors’s intense emotional core, ripped with rage and heartbreak, implores empathy. We may gasp in shock, but our heartstrings still twinge. His choices are not those of a noble boxing hero, but — Creed III seems to challenge — what choices does he have to begin with?
Creed III offers edge-of-your-seat sports drama.
Credit: Eli Ade/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures
As a director, Jordan comes out swinging with Creed III. The film has a winding journey of regret, revenge, and redemption, working in domestic drama, powerful posturing, and the showy sports spectacle required of this franchise. Yet, this sequel has sensational energy. Its pace, like its protagonist, moves gracefully and powerfully.
Scenes of the Creed family living in the lap of luxury are kinetically intercut with Dame’s struggle to pull himself out of the shadows. Striking cinematography makes Los Angeles into a series of gorgeous and gritty urban landscapes, where the glass mansions glisten and the grubby liquor stores glitter. This contrast of these two worlds further supports the film’s central rivalry, where several scenes of Adonis facing himself in a mirror urge audiences to consider his struggle to fully grasp who he was to Dame, then and now.
The cinematography of Kramer Morgenthau masterfully bolsters the story, then turns joltingly dynamic in the ring. The camera glides smoothly and strongly around the boxers, as if a partner in their complicated choreography. Slow-motion shots combined with hard-hitting sound effects sell every punch, showcasing the painful ripple of hammered flesh and the springs of sweat bursting free. Then, in one stunning moment, the camera puts us opposite Adonis, in the POV of Dame as an uppercut hits. Boom, the camera whip-tilts upward, knocking our eyes to the lights above. It’s a move so immersive that you might well grunt as if your own jaw just got clobbered by this famous fist. It’s stunning and exhilarating.
Which is all to say, Creed III packs one hell of a punch.
Creed III is now in theaters.
