'Creed III' Punches Above Its Weight

The past is a main character in all of the Creed movies (and most of the Rocky movies as well). It’s always out there lurking, reminding a young man of his family legacy or an older man of the places he’s been, good and bad, by choice or not. In Creed III, personal history takes on a formidable physical presence in one Damian Anderson (Jonathan Majors, who looks like he’s been bench-pressing bulldozers), an angry ghost from a chapter in Adonis’s life he’s been trying to outrun for years. Adonis and Damian were friends and allies in the group home where they spent a chunk of their childhoods. Then Damian, a Golden Gloves champion, took the fall for a crime that Adonis precipitated, and he went away for 18 years while Adonis became the hero of his own movie franchise. Now Damian is out. And he's hungry.