Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Robert Deniro, Kevin Hart, Jon Bernthal, Alan Arkin, Kim Basinger

Directed by: Peter Segal

Today, the day after Christmas, I’ve decided to go to the movies to go check out the latest Sly movie, “Grudge Match” and here is my review.

Plot/synopsis: Two aging former professional boxers Razor (Stallone) and The Kid (Deniro) go on living their lives 30 years after their final match together. The two of them still hate each other and they still feud together after all these years so the Kid finally challenges Razor a re-match. Razor kept refusing to fight because he is done and wants to move on; however, The Kid kept pressuring him to fight one final match with him. Since the Kid still hates Razor he was pretty desperate in settling things in the ring. Of course, Razor finally accepts The Kid’s challenge and comes out of retirement just to help himself get out of his financial troubles. Razor was broke and couldn’t afford to pay his rents for his home. As their fight approaches, their boxing promoter (Kevin Hart) tries to promote their fight — Razor and the Kid continues to not get along. The question is who will win this legendary fight? 

Well, I was pretty surprised of this film! Finally, Rocky and Raging Bull team up together in a boxing movie which this was supposed to happen years ago! Even though this film has NOTHING to do with Rocky Balboa at all… you can betcha there will be a lot of similarities and there are tons of Rocky references all over the movie!

This film is not just a boxing drama. It’s actually a comedy. Stallone and Deniro were pretty funny on screen. I definitely did have a lot of laughs. Deniro’s character, The Kid, kept trash talking Razor and Razor never wanted anything to do with the guy which is hilarious stuff. Some of the lines that Deniro says just had me crackin’ up… he was entertaining as hell like always. Look like Stallone is trying to do comedy films more. “The Expendables” movies are action comedies and so was “Escape Plan” a little bit. I guess it’s a new thing for Sly these days that he wants to do comedy more and I think he does a good job at it. While Sly Stallone is mostly known as an action guy… I guess he wants to show that he can be funny and he WAS funny in this movie. What I love the most about this movie is that Stallone continues to show his love for boxing and the same with Deniro.

The writing and the script was also good. Casting was good. Even though Kim Basinger is aging, she’s still looking hot. Jon Bernthal (Shane from “The Walking Dead”) did a great job in his first major acting role. Iron Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield make surprising cameos — not saying what they do ’cause I don’t wanna reveal any spoilers. I don’t know much about Kevin Hart and even he was entertaining as well!

This was a well-made film. I liked it a lot. The film didn’t bore me at all.

Two thumbs up!

Kev