Sly: Netflix’s Sylvester Stallone Documentary Is A One-Dimensional Slog

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WHY can’t Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone settle their rivalry like regular men? Why subject viewers to a dull documentary slugfest? Months after the release of the sanitised and mediocre Arnold, Stallone’s response is the sanitised and mediocre Sly. The resemblances are uncanny. Both of them were inspired by Hercules as young studs, both had tough fathers, and both present-day stars are seen smoking cigars in gaudy mansions as a sign of success. And both seem to be doing more acting in their respective non-fiction hagiographies than they do in their action movies. For instance, at the beginning, we see the 77-year-old Stallone visit his old neighbourhood in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. He unconvincingly claims that this is the first time he’s been back here in 65 years; the performance of ‘nostalgia’ is difficult to watch.

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Stallone’s drawl-packed narration is worse, because it plays out like an extended ‘Movies That Made Us’ episode about the Rocky and Rambo franchises, and his personal life is completely off limits. Early on, he mentions that he landed up in Los Angeles with “a dog and a wife”; that’s the only evidence of him being a family man. His late son — who co-starred with him in Rocky V — is eulogised in passing. Stallone doesn’t speak about his feelings, because there’s a sense that he thinks real men don’t cry. He also mentions that his parents were self-absorbed, which is why he became the same as a Hollywood star. The irony is that Sly is a jarring embodiment of this self-absorption — there is no great insight or depth, no understanding or curiosity about himself beyond the fact that his career is unique and he speaks in motivational phrases. At least his old-time rival admitted to an affair, even if he had made his apology sound like a self-help book of politically correct slogans.

The only thing we learn from Sly is something we already know: Rocky Balboa was a fictional avatar of Stallone himself. The relationship between reel and real is amusing because a few moments in the film featuring Balboa’s old coach are revealed as a young Stallone’s meta-rant to his toxic dad. But the moments featuring Balboa’s wife Adrian are left naked; they don’t have a corresponding real-world link because he refuses to delve into his marriage beyond the cursory “that happened, you know”. It’s nice to see Quentin Tarantino as one of the talking heads, but the ‘70s-Hollywood superfan is visibly at sea while speaking about Stallone’s more popular outings. It’s a good time to mention that he sounds like a film critic with a very specific interest in B-movie talent. The smirk while remarking that an Oscar-winning Rocky had catapulted Stallone into an orbit of young talents like Pacino and De Niro is on brand for a film-maker who loves his revisionist historicals.

There are a handful of moving moments — mostly home footage — of Stallone and his dying father; it’s the closest we see him to being vulnerable on camera, and this includes his Expendables-heavy filmography in the last decade. There are shots of Stallone listening to tape recordings of his younger self; his reactions are disarming, but this little gimmick runs its course when it becomes clear that the man is tired of smiling. In the end, he tries to sound regretful about all the time he’s spent creating a legacy instead of being around for his daughters. Again, the ‘script’ is tangible, because it’s almost as if he knows the formula of how a documentary about famous people is supposed to unfold. It’s an afterthought here, particularly because there’s no proof of him being a father at all before these moments. There’s the one anecdote about how, in Cop Land, Stallone provoked Robert De Niro into reacting harder during a scene. The intent is to show that Stallone was as much a writer-director as an actor, except it also proves that he’s additionally an annoying co-star who behaves like the Sunny Deol of the West.

Personally, I was happy to hear that Stallone is proud to have made Rocky Balboa (2007) after the failure of Rocky V, because a lot of us Rocky enthusiasts consider it to be the foundation of the Creed movies. It’s a genuinely solid comeback film in a franchise that had no business returning after two decades of nothingness. If only he said all of this in a more human manner. I don’t mean his trademark voice or his childish way with words; the staging could have been more than just him plonked at boring corners of his vast house. It could have been more than just archival footage of a younger Stallone giving interviews about phases of his life. Even Arnold knew that an outdoorsy narrator might add more texture to a story that’s hardly untold. Even the former Governor of California who excelled at playing robots had a better sense of non-fiction mythmaking. Which is to say: Schwarzenegger has won this absolutely unnecessary bout — one that I hope has no rematch. If it does, I’d like the training montage to be a series of shots in which the two old-timers are discussing the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato with each other.

Stream Sly here.