Sylvester Stallone Has A Lot To Say In ‘Sly’

Sylvester Stallone has never really hesitated to tell us what he thinks, about anything. Especially his past films. There is a SNL sketches from 1997 when Stallone hosted during the promotion Cop Lands. Stallone, playing himself, is involved in a car accident with another driver played by Norm Macdonald. For the duration of the sketch, Stallone tries to help while Macdonald screams in agony, not pain, but remembers another bad Stallone movie like Rhinestones*, while Stallone tries to defend the thinking around everyone. (Stallone tries to explain Cobra I had a lot of problems during assembly.)

*For the record, I like it Rhinestones.

In the new documentary about his life, Sly, which closed the Toronto International Film Festival, we don’t really understand what Stallone thinks about each of the films he’s made. If you want Stallone’s opinion, say: Nightjars Or The specialist, it’s not that kind of film. And to be honest, Stallone made a plot of films so something like this would be a very long film. Plus, as noted, Stallone hasn’t been shy about talking about his past films and what went wrong, so that information is already out there.

Instead, director Thom Zimny ​​chose to cover a few select areas of Stallone’s life. One of the biggest, of course, being the release and success of Rocky – but it is interesting to then focus on the next two Stallone films which fall between Rocky And Rocky II which were both critical and box office disasters: FIST And Paradise Alley. It was an interesting time for Stallone where he decided to take huge risks. And none of them worked, which seems to have taught Stallone to just give the audience what they want, which in this case was another Rocky movie. (Stallone would go on to treat audiences to four more Rocky films.)

And that becomes the heart of the documentary, Stallone, as a force of nature, knowing what the audience wants to see. Stallone’s rivalry with Arnold Schwarzenegger (who appears in Sly as a talking head), and this documentary is also about it. But Stallone and Schwarzenegger have very different mindsets when it comes to filmmaking. Schwarzenegger was looking for great directors. During Schwarzenegger’s early period, he worked with James Cameron three times, John McTiernan twice, Ivan Reitman three times, Paul Verhoeven and Walter Hill. Schwarzenegger’s mindset was to find great filmmakers and trust them to make a great film.

Stallone is the opposite. Stallone’s confidence was in himself, to the detriment of many of the directors he ended up working with. Just go to the “production” tab on Wikipedia for almost any film Stallone directed. It’s starting to get funny how, like clockwork, there will be a section about how Stallone and his director “disagreed” and Stallone ended up taking over production. If Stallone were to star in a bad movie, it would at least be on his terms.

On the cinema side, the doc revolves around Stallone’s three franchises: Rocky, RamboAnd The Expendables. The first two make a lot of sense, but with all due respect to The Expendables, it’s just a franchise that doesn’t have the cultural importance of the other two. But, I get it, this sort of ends Stallone’s career after the doc delved into Stallone’s last real attempt at critical acclaim in Cop Lands. (Stallone is legitimately awesome in Cop Lands, which was virtually ignored by awards at the time. Stallone would finally get another Oscar nomination for playing Rocky again in Creed.)

Stallone on his father is interesting. And I’ve never really heard him talk at length about his father like that before. It was an obviously complicated and strained relationship – Stallone often describes his father as “physical” – which also influenced Stallone’s entire career. Stallone gets quite emotional talking about his love for Polo – and how he was getting pretty good – but his father’s jealousy and insecurities kept him from performing. There’s some really interesting footage from the mid-1980s of Stallone organizing a polo match in which he brought in a group of A-list players so he and his father could play against each other. At one point, Stallone’s father takes a low blow, hitting his son in the back with a mallet. Stallone even commented on this at the time in the post-match press conference, sort of making a joke about it, but also laced with a lot of truth. We cut to present-day Stallone who says that after that day he sold all the horses, all the equipment and never performed again. What was supposed to be a nice time for him and his father, his father ruined it again. And we can still say it Really bothers Sly. And all of these emotions about his father are used to define Stallone’s relationship with his late son, Sage, who died in 2012. Stallone doesn’t talk much about Sage — what little he does, it’s obvious that it’s another very raw relationship. subject – but clips used from when the two performed together in Rocky V are quite heartbreaking.

Sly is about as good as a Sylvester Stallone documentary can get without being a long-winded Ken Burns saga. (However, I would love to watch something this long on Stallone; also, bring Greta Gerwig as a talking head), I would like to hear his updated thoughts on Rhinestoneswhy he didn’t do it Beverly Hills Copwhat was wrong with the awkward shower scene with Sharon Stone in The specialist, why he felt he had to take over so many productions. (But of all the films, Sly goes into some detail about Stop or my mother will shoot.) Stallone looks like someone who always has a lot to say and will tell his stories to anyone who will listen. And I would like to hear more.

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