Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) is a struggling, semi-pro boxer who works by day as the reluctant leg breaker for a local mobster. He's also a sensitive man with pet turtles, a big heart and an inferiority complex about his intelligence. Known throughout his Philadelphia neighborhood as a good guy, he spends his free time heckling a friend named Paulie (Burt Young) while trying to romance Paulie's sister, Adrian (Talia Shire), and otherwise dreaming of making good on life's early promise.

When his trainer, Mickey (Burgess Meredith), kicks him out of his local gym he's cut adrift with very few prospects. Simultaneously the world heavyweight-boxing champion, Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), is trying to put on a fight with one of his leading contenders. As his ranked opponents withdraw from consideration the fight's promoters turn to the ranks of unknown talents to give one of them a chance at the big time.

Rocky is brought to Apollo's attention with his suggestive nickname of "the Italian Stallion" and the two agree to fight with five weeks of preparation on New Years Day. Mickey reconciles with Rocky and works as his trainer. Paulie uses his brutish charms and turns into his promoter. Adrian reluctantly dates him and becomes his lover. Through the course of his training the day of the fight looms as a make-or-break proposition.

In the end, Rocky goes the distance, inflicting all kinds of hurt on Apollo before losing the final decision of which he seems dimly aware. Instead he cries for Adrian who alone completes him and the picture ends with their triumphal embrace through a crowd of fight enthusiasts who cheer on the champion and his worthy opponent.

Budgeted for $1 million dollars and shot in 28 days, Rocky was born as the germ of inspiration in Stallone's imagination and was further honed as his own final shot at the big time. Approaching 30-years of age in 1975 he found himself at a turning point in his acting career. With credits in a few movies performing as an Italian ethnic stereotype, he was troubled by what he saw as limited options in the entertainment industry.

Inspired by a boxing match between Muhammad Ali and an unknown fighter named Chuck Wepner who went the distance against the champ, Stallone wrote a script in three days time that was concerned with a struggling boxer. The resulting project, "Rocky", was his vanity project to prove himself as a viable screen talent beyond the limited roles he'd previously had in such fair as The Lords of Flatbush, Deathrace 2000 and Bananas. It was also his last, most desperate bid for success as a due or die proposition with regard to his somewhat marginal show business career.

Even though his script attracted studio attention Stallone was considered an unknown risk in the title role and was, at one point, offered $150,000 to let Ryan O'Neal play the part. Pushing on through this resistance he sold the script with himself signed for the movie's lead role and secured studio financing so long as the picture remained within its $1,000,000 budget. When production costs reached $1.1 million, the film's producers agreed with Stallone's enthusiasm and mortgaged their homes to pay for the shortfall.

Among the reasons for its increased budget were revisions made during the shooting process. For instance the scene where Rocky reveals his fears and doubts to Adrian before the final fight added time to the shooting schedule and was not preferred by the film's producers. Stallone, however, fought for the sequence and was given one shot to nail it for which he got himself drunk to smooth out his nervousness and was rewarded for his effort with one of the film's more moving sequences.

Then there was the problem over how to end the movie. In the original script there was a relatively downbeat ending with Rocky losing the final fight, entering an empty boxing arena and then taking Adrian's hand to walk away together. Test screenings convinced director John G. Avildsen that a more upbeat, celebratory finish was called for. Thus the ending was re-shot with Rocky losing the final fight and he and Adrian pushing through the boxing arena crowd to embrace ringside with Bill Conti's theme blaring.

Altogether Avildsen's able direction and Stallone's script and career sealing performance in the title role led Rocky into being film of the year. It grossed some $117 million at the domestic box office, turned its star into a household name, yielded four sequels before finally petering out in 1990 and made underdog heroes popular. Certain of its scenes and motifs also provided the basis of various '80s sports myths about athletic excellence and physical training just as the Italian Stallion was made an American icon. To this day, in fact, Rocky's feet are enshrined in concrete tiles outside the Philadelphia Art Museum where the boxer's training montage showed him running in preparation for his title fight.

Nominated for the year's top Oscar against All the President's Men, Bound for Glory, Network and Taxi Driver, Stallone's crowd-pleaser came out on top. Despite its critical dismissal as being a slight film, audiences were overwhelmingly supportive and its conciliatory message was exactly appropriate for the times. Released but one year after the fall of Saigon in the midst of the bicentennial fever of 1976, the film featured straightforward storytelling and characters that were richly produced from within their lower middle class milieu.

Rocky, Paulie, Adrian and Mickey all were members of an insulated, uneducated and ultimately static world. Their fortunes were closely tied to their efforts as day laborers in a hand-to-mouth existence extolling the virtues of survival. Yet their fates were closely tied to childhood dreams and their source of strength was a reliance on one another as neighborhood people without wealth but plenty of strength and charm.

Apollo notwithstanding as a well-spoken black American aristocrat, Rocky is also focused on a white Ethnic underclass brimming over with blue-collar frustrations in a shrinking economy. Rocky works as a debt collector. Paulie is a meat locker attendant. Adrian is a pet store clerk. Mickey is a crusty old gym proprietor. All four of them lie somehow outside the American dream factory of expanding opportunity and the chance for a better tomorrow though their aspirations continue to hold forth the lure they might one day know the fulfillment of their dreams.

It's this element of achievement and simplicity that remains unsullied by the four Rocky sequels and numerous rip-offs that have been released since 1976. Stallone's desperate personal plunge in the world of his most famous character is filled with sensitivity and humanity that has long been lost on him as he's been cartoonized in subsequent movies. Still, the bristling hope, heartache, doubt and triumph of Rocky are everywhere abundant from its opening frames of a backroom fight through its final embrace.

Viewers today inured to the schmaltz of big screen sentimentality will be surprised by how surprisingly touching Rocky really is. Its drama is by no stretch of the imagination any kind of complicated undertaking. But in delivering a powerful entertainment the story of Rocky Balboa symbolizes his most enduring character trait. Going the distance and showing heart, courage and stamina are just as important as having a champion's killer abilities. Such was the moral tale of the Rocky. Such was the sign of the times.

Though it's clear to me that Rocky isn't an appropriate recipient for the Best Picture Academy Award, especially when considering its co-nominees and other competition in titles like Carrie and The Outlaw Josey Wales, it's still a terrific little movie. See it for Stallone's performance. See it for Conti's score. See it for its class depictions set in the turmoil of the mid-'70s. Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, see it because it will hold your attention with surprising bursts of dramatic action and honest human emotion.