--- title: "Rocky II" year: 1979 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/rocky-ii" fi1m_score: 66 critics_score: 63 critics_reviews: 6 published: "2026-09-19T12:59:41.373572+00:00" updated: "2026-09-19T12:59:54.960581+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Rocky II (1979) Directed by Sylvester Stallone · 1h 59m · MPA PG · Drama, Action **Fi1m score: 66** · Critics 63 from 6 reviews *In a sentence:* The first film again, with a bigger house, a worse suit and every child in Philadelphia running behind him > Sylvester Stallone takes over as director and runs the first film again, with more money and less patience. The middle hour drags and the sentiment is thick, but the fight at the end is worth waiting for. ## Synopsis Philadelphia, moments after the first fight. Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) and the heavyweight champion Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) are taken to the same hospital, where Creed demands a rematch and Rocky, warned by the doctors about his eye, says he is finished with boxing. He proposes to Adrian (Talia Shire) at the zoo, marries her, and spends his prize money on a house, a black car and a leather jacket. The money goes quickly. A television commercial falls apart because he cannot read the cue cards; a job at the meat plant with Paulie (Burt Young) does not last; Adrian goes back to the pet shop and learns she is pregnant. Creed, stung by letters calling the first fight a fix, goads him in the press. Rocky goes to see his old trainer Mickey (Burgess Meredith). ## Review Three years after [*Rocky*](https://film.one/film/rocky), Sylvester Stallone has taken the director’s chair from John G. Avildsen and made the same film again. That is not entirely a complaint. The first picture ended with a loser who had gone the distance, and the honest sequel is the one that asks what such a man does next: he spends the money, loses it, and finds there is nothing else he is good at. *Rocky II* knows this and says so, and for half an hour it is a decent film about a man who has been briefly famous. Then it has to get him back into the ring, and the getting takes a long time. The early scenes are the best writing Stallone does here. Rocky proposes to Adrian at the zoo, with the tigers behind the glass, and Talia Shire lets a long silence pass across her face before she answers. He buys a house he cannot afford and a black car he cannot drive, and Tom Bronson and Sandy Berke Jordan put him in a leather jacket with a tiger on the back, so that his new money is visible from across the street. It is gone within a couple of reels. The commercial shoot, where he stands in a stiff suit and cannot read the cue cards, is the one scene that is properly cruel; we felt for him, and were slightly annoyed with the film for making so sure that we did. Burt Young’s Paulie is still a small man made smaller by his brother-in-law’s luck. Bill Butler shoots the city brighter and cleaner than it looked in 1976, and the difference is not in the film’s favour. The Philadelphia of *Rocky* was grey and wet and lit like a place nobody had chosen to film. Here the sun is out and the new house is full of light, and only the meat plant where Rocky briefly swings a carcass keeps the old grime. Frank McRae’s foreman, laying him off in one unhurried scene, is one of the few faces that seems to have a life outside the story. Carl Weathers has the better arc and knows it. Apollo has won and it has done him no good: the letters say the fight was fixed, and Weathers plays a champion who cannot bear being doubted, snapping at Duke (Tony Burton) and at his wife Mary Anne (Sylvia Meals), and taunting Rocky through the newspapers because he cannot reach him any other way. It is a real performance of wounded pride, and the film keeps cutting away from it to watch Rocky mope. Burgess Meredith’s Mickey is back, with the rasp and the spit of the first film, but the script gives him a great deal of shouting and only two or three things to say. The second half takes a turn we will not describe. Stallone directs it with the lights low and the music up, and Bill Conti’s score does the work the pictures will not, swelling under every doorway. The sentiment is thick enough to see from the back row. And yet the training run that follows, with Rocky collecting children on every corner until hundreds of them are chasing him up the museum steps, got us anyway. We were embarrassed by it and moved by it in the same breath, and if you can hold both feelings at once you are the audience this film wants. Then the fight, and the fight is superb. Janice Hampton and Stanford C. Allen cut it round by round, faster and tighter than anything in the first film, so that we always know where each man is and what the last punch cost him. Butler puts the camera low and close, between the ropes, and the gloves land with a heavy, wet sound. Weathers moves like a champion and Stallone like a man who has to be hit before he can start, and the last thirty seconds are edited with real nerve. We were on the edge of the sofa, which is what the previous ninety minutes had been promising and had not quite paid. Against the first film this is plainly the smaller picture: louder in its music, cruder in its cuts, less sure of when to leave a room. Stallone gives his own character three speeches too many and Adrian too few. But the people are the same people, and the ending is earned in the ring rather than in the dialogue. It runs 119 minutes and carries a PG. Watch the first one again beforehand; this makes more sense, and matters more, if you do. *Fi1m score 66, published 19 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (6) - **Empire**, Ian Nathan (70/100, inferred): The first sequel manages to retain some pathos and credibility despite contriving to reset Rocky for another underdog story. It features lurid sentiment and a rougher directorial force from Stallone but keeps a leathery texture of working-class Philly life. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/rocky-ii-review/) - **Time Out**, DMacp (70/100, inferred): An old-fashioned sequel that plumbs depths and hits heights as Rocky gets another crack at the championship. The script sweats to pump hearts with emotional stakes, but Stallone's performance leaves one undecided whether to gag or sob; the final fight sequences reach giddy heights of cathartic glee. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/rocky-ii) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (70/100, inferred): The review praises the boxing and training scenes, especially the exciting finale that tops the first film, but notes the non-boxing plot drags and gives the picture a murky quality. It credits Stallone and the producers with delivering an irresistible underdog payoff in the final 30 minutes. [Read](https://variety.com/1978/film/reviews/rocky-ii-1200424433/) - **Radio Times**, John Marriott (3/5): The critic describes this follow-up as unsurprisingly failing to match the original, with Rocky contemplating a risky return to the ring. The big-fight finale is executed with skill, passion and glee, and Burgess Meredith's return is welcome. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-slm70n/rocky-ii/) - **The New York Times**, Vincent Canby (40/100, inferred): The critic finds that Rocky II tries too hard to repeat the formula of the original, resulting in a waxy, lifeless feel with aimless buildup before the fight. Stallone's direction and the stock character routines make it feel like a pale carbon copy that never matches the predecessor's energy. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1979/06/15/archives/screen-rocky-ii-fights-a-rematchsecond-stanza.html) - **Eye for Film**, Stephen Carty (70/100, inferred): The critic calls it a pretty good sequel that remains credibly grounded in the real world, with strong turns from Carl Weathers and Burgess Meredith and a satisfying training arc. It is inevitably not as good as the first film and sometimes feels like a retread, but it is still a worthy second instalment and better than the next three in the series. [Read](http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/rocky-ii-film-review-by-stephen-carty) ## Details - **Director:** Sylvester Stallone - **Director:** Sylvester Stallone - **Screenplay:** Sylvester Stallone - **Cinematography:** Bill Butler - **Editor:** Stanford C. Allen, Janice Hampton - **Music:** Bill Conti - **Costume design:** Sandy Berke Jordan, Tom Bronson - **Producer:** Robert Chartoff, Irwin Winkler - **Cast:** Sylvester Stallone as Robert 'Rocky' Balboa; Talia Shire as Adrianna 'Adrian' Balboa; Burt Young as Paulie Pennino; Carl Weathers as Apollo Creed; Burgess Meredith as Mickey Goldmill; Tony Burton as Tony 'Duke' Evers; Joe Spinell as Tony Gazzo; Leonard Gaines as Agent - **Runtime:** 1h 59m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG - **Release (the US):** 15 June 1979 - **Genres:** Drama, Action - **Budget:** $7 million - **Box office:** $200 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2P9ATb9Qx8 ## Where to watch in the US - AMC+: streaming - Pluto TV: free - Amazon Prime Video: add-on, uhd - Apple TV: add-on, uhd - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd, leaving 2026-10-01 - Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, uhd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $6.99, uhd - Apple TV: buy $14.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-19.* Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IT, JP, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PH, PL, PT, RO, SE, SG, TH, TR, UA, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *The Set-Up* (1949): Robert Wise gives one washed-up fighter one long night, told in real time - *Fat City* (1972): John Huston’s Stockton boxers, going nowhere slowly; the film Rocky’s first half wishes it were - *Raging Bull* (1980), Fi1m 91: Scorsese takes the same sport and removes every consolation; watch it afterwards, not before — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/raging-bull.md) - *Girlfight* (2000): Michelle Rodriguez in Brooklyn gyms, the underdog story with the sentiment sanded off - *Twenty-Four Seven* (1997): Bob Hoskins opens a boxing club in a dead Midlands town; Shane Meadows, black and white --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/rocky-ii