Sylvester Stallone, as screenwriter and star, struck a deep, lasting chord with this fountainhead of clichés, about a good-hearted South Philly lug who gets his shot at boxing fame. Rocky is the quintessential underdog, and Stallone plays him as if he were an animal. Grunting and mumbling in search of sustenance (and occasionally affection), Stallone gives us the Neanderthal as hero. It would be a daring portrayal of someone in a class – economic, social, and intellectual – that Hollywood usually ignores if Stallone didn’t lay it on so thickly. His own mumbling would have been sufficient. Nevertheless, this won Best Picture and created an icon from which Stallone would never fully escape (a fact he nobly addresses in the franchise’s fascinating sixth installment, Rocky Balboa).
