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With a discernible lack of box office success in recent years, Sly Stallone has turned once again to his old hits and brought his two big characters out of retirement. Later in the year we have Rambo IV - In A Serpent's Eye to, er, look forward to. Before that though, there's a revival for The Italian Stallion himself, Rocky Balboa.
The story sees a widowed Rocky running a restaurant in Philadelphia but feeling that there’s some unfinished business to deal with. 'I think I still got something left in the basement,' he explains to Paulie (Burt Young), revealing that he wants to box again.

In true Rocky style, this escalates rapidly from a few local fights for a few hundred dollars, to a shot in the ring with the current world champion, Mason ‘The Line’ Dixon.

But, for all the far-fetched devices of the plot – basically a rehash of the first movie with added arthritis – you know what? This fifth sequel isn’t bad. In fact, with George Foreman having set the standard for aged boxers enjoying a last pre-pension hurrah, it isn’t even that far-fetched.

Stallone, who also writes and directs, gets the tone spot on, exploits the audience’s affection for the character to often amusing effect and, mainly thank to that theme, genuinely gets the adrenaline pumping, Best of all though, it provides the saga with a far more fitting finale than the truly dire Rocky V.