Sly Movie Review

Sly (2023)

Watch Sly on Netflix
Written by: David Koepp (screenplay by)
Directed by: Alex Kurtzman
Starring: Tom Cruise, Jake Johnson
Rated: R
Watch the trailer

Plot
Sylvester Stallone has entertained millions during his near fifty year career. This retrospective intimately looks at the actor, writer, and director-producer against his inspirational life story.

Verdict
This feels self serving. If you want some insight on Sly's most famous works, this will give you plenty. If you want to see the less flattering details of his life or his personal life at all, this avoids it. This is a documentary about Sly from Sly; he's crafting this story. That's not necessarily bad except it feels like that. As a quick introduction to a few of his most famous movies, it accomplishes that. Past that, this leaves a lot out.
It depends.

Review
Sylvester Stallone is an action movie star. His most famous movies are Rocky and Rambo. At seventy-seven he's still entertaining. Through various interviews, I've always found him to be more introspective than he's stereotyped.

In the first scene Sly talks about regrets and how time moves so quickly. His goal is to fix that through writing and painting. He also talks about moving and starting over, and while there are many intercut shots of a crew packing up his house, this doesn't get into why he's moving or where he's going.

Sylvester 'Sly' Stallone

Sly visits his old neighborhood. I wondered if this was going be a road trip down memory lane, but this is the only excursion Sly takes. From there it jumps into the making of Rocky, and this begins to feel like a making of about that movie and not about Sly. This does eventually get into some of his other movies.

My favorite story is how excited he was to work with Robert De Niro in Copland, and how he went off script to push De Niro get the scene he wanted. De Niro continued the scene as well and it turned out like Stallone wanted. Schwarzenegger also cameos and talks about his offer for Stop or My Mom Will Shoot.

Stallone discusses some of his dud movies, and I hoped it would delve more into how he's revisited his most famous movies. Is the reason he's still making movies because he wants to fix the past as he claims in the opening scenes? What motivates him to keep going? What was it like to revisit the Rocky franchise through Creed? Does he feel like he's cheapened the Rambo franchise by continually adding.

I wanted more from this. We don't have to delve into his lowest moments, but I would like for this to feel less like a commercial for Sly's greatest hits. What drive someone so successful to continue creating well into retirement age?