Ryan Coogler, who conceived and directed the new hit film Creed, is up to something very tricky with this effort to update the Rocky films to the 21st century. Creed is not a Cinderella story about a working-class chump who gets an unexpected shot at glory, as the original Rocky was. Instead, it's a character study of a soul in quiet torment.
He is Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan), and he's the illegitimate son of Apollo Creed, the publicity-mad heavyweight champ who plucked the hangdog mug Rocky Balboa from the streets of Philadelphia to be his opponent in a bicentennial fight back in 1976. Adonis is seeking some kind of deliverance for himself in the sport his father dominated—the father he never knew, the father who was married to a woman other than his mother, the...