The Movie: Rocky's many sequels throughout the 80's have clouded for many people of my generation, the greatness of the original. Particularly the super-cheesy USA vs. those evil commie bastards in Russia Rocky IV. A lot of people from my generation are surprised to hear that it was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, winning three of them, even beating out some great classics as Network and Taxi Driver for the "Best Picture" award, and earning Stallone nominations for "Best Actor" and "Best Writing". Yep, that's right, the movie Rocky was written by Rambo himself!

If you've somehow managed to never see this film. And if you don't know what it's about, here's a real quick synopsis: Stallone stars as "Rocky Balboa", a never-was boxer from Philly, who gets a once in a lifetime chance to fight the heavyweight champion of the world for the title. It's a story about a guy who's down, but never really out. A guy dealing with the fact that people who wouldn't give him any respect before, suddenly want to be his friend again when they find out about this amazing opportunity he received, and of course, the money he'll be paid for it. And it's a love story between two people who aren't exactly the most popular people in town.

And of course there is the climax, an epic battle in the ring, in which Rocky's goal isn't really to win the match -- that would be impossible -- but to just go the distance, all 15 rounds against his opponent, a feat which no man before him has ever accomplished.

Although Rocky isn't the best movie I've ever seen, I'd still call it a classic for having woven itself into the fabric of American culture and is certainly worth checking out if you've never seen it before, or if it's been a long time since you have.

The DVD: I am reviewing the 2001 Special Edition release, and not the original 1997 crappy DVD release of this film.

The video on this disc is a bit of a mixed bag. The actual compression process came out pretty clean, except there is some loss of shadow detail, particularly in the very dark scenes, and the film print they started with had a considerable amount of dust and scratches on it. The grain is heavier than we are used to seeing these days, but it's about right for a film from the mid 70's. Basically, the transfer looks like what it is -- an old film.

The audio had the typical lack of fidelity that you'd expect from a film of this era, but other than that, it was clean, and about as good as you could really expect it to be. Special features include commentary with the director and producers (no Stallone), a making-of featurette, some deleted footage, a little video interview with Stallone, tributes to some people who worked on the film, and trailers... for all five Rocky films. Nothing too in depth or enlightening, but fun stuff to have.