6/3/2023 0 Comments Rocky balboa speech tattooIn August 2007, a statue of Rocky was also erected in the Serbian village of Žitište. His immense popularity there has led to a statue of his Rocky character being placed permanently near the Philadelphia Museum of Art as a cultural landmark. He is considered by many (including the mayor of Philadelphia) as the one who made the city of Philadelphia an international tourist attraction with the Rocky Steps. Stallone's culturally influential films changed pop culture history and he has largely enjoyed a career on the Hollywood A list for over 30 years. He has played two characters who have become a part of the American cultural lexicon: Rocky Balboa, the boxer who overcame all odds to fight for love and glory, and John Rambo, a courageous soldier who specialized in violent rescue and revenge missions.ĭuring the 1980s, he enjoyed phenomenal popularity and was one of the biggest movie stars in the world with the Rocky and Rambo franchises. One of the biggest box office draws in the world from the '70s to the '90s, international megastar Sylvester Stallone is a global icon of machismo and Hollywood action heroism. It’s a beautiful thing.Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone (born July 6, 1946) is an American actor, director and screenwriter. What an asshole.īut for a couple glorious minutes, The Expendables becomes something even better than a good movie: it takes us on a bizarre, idiosyncratic journey into the mind of a man who will paint a beautiful guitar only to smash it into a million pieces while listening to Bob Seger in a tattoo parlor filled with naked pinups. Having just witnessed his old war buddy spill his guts in a weirdly masculine display of massive vulnerability, Stallone’s Barney just silently slinks into the darkness, as if no one could think of anything worth having him say, so they just gave up. Actually, if you watch cutaways to Stallone through the speech, it almost looks like he’s sorry he got the guy talking in the first place. This movie doesn’t deserve it, but it at least has sense enough to shut up for a second and harvest this one good thing.Īnd the film gets back to being shitty almost immediately. Given the context of this particular film, Rourke goes far above and beyond what would ever be expected of him, delivering a strange monologue about the blackness of his soul while choking back an increasing wave of emotion. What moved Mickey Rourke to give so much to this scene? You can balk at my calling it poetry, but I really do think this is some of the most unlikely great acting I can think of. The groans as he leans forward, the way he draws from his weird Hobbit pipe, it all seems almost too perfect to even be acting. He makes this culture a part of his soul and personifies it to the extent that every detail, every move he makes, becomes fascinating. Stallone forces these knuckleheads into a greasy, Bud Light biker culture, but with many of them it looks like old dudes playing dress up. I’ve never been able to verify how much of this was improvised, but the scene’s not in the script drafts I’ve looked at, and it certainly has that flavor.Ī huge part of that is just Rourke, though. Not so much the substance, but the accent notes, the asides. Suffice to say, there is a poetry at play in the words here. I won’t start quoting my favorite bits because, honestly, I’ll just end up quoting the whole thing. In a film that feels like one giant flatline, there was this one brief heartbeat: It struck me as special the first time I saw it and the 1,000 times I’ve seen it since. For this Stallone fan, it was a massive disappointment.īut there was one bit that deserves recognition. Everything Stallone got right with Balboa and Rambo disappeared, replaced by a vanity wink harkening back to the worst tenets of ‘80s and ‘90s action fare (a lot of those movies are awful, fam). Instead, The Expendables was a bland, B-movie filled with half-written characters and CG blood squibs. Made right after the generous goodwill received for the one-two punch of Rocky Balboa and Rambo, The Expendables felt like a dream idea come true: an R-rated action extravaganza starring a laundry list of aged muscle heads (and Jason Statham), guided by a guy who had just showed stunning displays of both character understanding and hardcore violence. Say Something Nice is dedicated to those gems - memorable, standout, even great moments from movies that.well, aren’t.Įven as an avowed Stallone fan, particularly when he writes and/or directs, The Expendables has always been a thorn in my side. And it’s not always some binary pile-sorting of "good movies" and "bad movies" sometimes there’s quality material smack in the middle of the muck. Movie fans know all too well that you have to wade through a lot of disappointment to find the good stuff.
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