Film reviews: Creed with Stallone; Mockingjay with Jennifer Lawrence

Sly Stallone doesn’t throw a punch in Creed, the latest Rocky film, but he’s still on target.

Sylvester Stallone

As someone who finds it hard to follow the timeline of chronology-warping franchises such as Star Wars and Terminator, the Rocky films are a relief. Creed, the seventh and one of the best, follows on from the sixth, Rocky Balboa of 2006. It’s also the first, I think, in which Sylvester Stallone, 70 next year, doesn’t punch anyone.

Another first is that Stallone is not the screenwriter — though he has chosen well in handing the reins to rising director Ryan Coogler, who co-wrote the script with Aaron Covington. The Wire alumnus Michael B. Jordan, who worked with Coogler on his 2013 debut Fruitvale Station, stars as Adonis Creed, son of Rocky’s great rival turned friend Apollo Creed.

We first meet Adonis as a troubled boy, fighting his way through juvenile institutions. He never met his famous father, who died in the ring at the hands of Dolph Lundgren’s Soviet fighting machine Drago in Rocky IV.

“Every punch I have ever thrown has been on my own,’’ Adonis reflects at one point. But that changes when Adonis persuades Rocky to train him. The rapport between Stallone and Jordan is fabulous, especially in the old-school training scenes, chasing chickens to improve speed and all the rest, that pay homage to the original, Oscar-winning 1976 film.

Tessa Thompson (Selma) is excellent as a singer who Adonis falls for. But all is secondary to the ring and the Big Fight, this time against undefeated English boxer “Pretty’’ Ricky Conlan, played with pugilistic focus by professional boxer Tony Bellew. I don’t know if French cinematographer Maryse Alberti is a fight fan but her close-up camera work captures the unbearable intensity of a championship bout, its beauty and brutality. There are a few clunky moments but by and large Creed avoids cliche and, like Rocky 40 years ago, resists the temptation to fix its fights for feel-good reasons.

The good news is that The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 is far superior to its predecessor. It has a tight plot, heart-racing action scenes, strong performances from a cast we have come to know well and, best of all, because it’s the final film in the franchise risks are taken with the central characters. If you haven’t read Suzanne Collins’s books (I haven’t) the question of who will live and who will die adds real interest.

That Part 2 is so much better than last year’s plodding, aimless Part 1 should be a lesson. The studio wanted to wring maximum profit from Collins’s final book, following a precedent set with Harry Potter and Twilight, but the result was a bit of a sham. The films were shot more or less as one, which is why we have the privilege of seeing the mighty Philip Seymour Hoffman in one more performance, almost two years after his death.

Part 2 picks up where Part 1 left off: Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is recovering after being almost choked to death by her fellow Hunger Games victor and one-time love Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), who has been brainwashed by the ruling forces of the Capitol, led by President Coriolanus Snow (a slyly sympathetic Donald Sutherland).

However, Katniss is safe in an anti-Capitol stronghold, and pledges herself to the self-declared president of the rebel territories, Alma Coin (Julianne Moore). Coin and advisers Plutarch Heavensbee (Hoffman), Beetee Latier (Jeffrey Wright) and Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson) see her main value as a propaganda tool, the star of heroic videos designed to unite and incite the citizens of Panem. In this role she is the Mockingjay.

But we know Katniss is a warrior, and she soon defies her brief and embarks on a single-minded mission to kill Snow. “Nothing good is possible while he is alive,’’ she says, “and I can’t make another speech about it.’’ Single-minded but not singled-handed, as she is joined by the ever-reliable Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth), the less reliable Peeta, after he is released, Finnick Odair (Sam Claflin) and others.

From here, it’s an action-packed race through a booby-trapped city to try to breach Snow’s citadel. A highlight is sewer-level battle with a horde of zombie-like creatures. Along the way some topical ideas are explored, including the ethics of war. “No one who supports the Capitol is innocent,’’ Katniss is told when she frets about civilian casualties.

Creed (M)

3.5 stars

National release

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 (M)

3 stars

National release