Sly review — Netflix’s Sylvester Stallone documentary is punchy and unexpectedly poignant

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When his 1978 crime saga Fist received disparaging reviews, Sylvester Stallone informed critics that he “would love to make an appointment with them in any alley that they choose”. Thankfully the prospect of sparring with the man who played both Rocky and Rambo is not one that those of us reviewing his new Netflix documentary have to fear. Not just because Stallone is nearing 80 and today prefers painting to pugilism, but because Sly is a film that is hard to dislike.

Directed by Thom Zimny and executive produced by Stallone, this largely first-person retrospective is aptly punchy and unexpectedly poignant. We begin not with a litany of achievements, but an admission of regret and a concession to the inexorable passing of time. The camera moves around sculptures of boxers, movie props, action figurines and leatherbound scripts before lingering on a pair of reading glasses, an ornamental skull: mementos and memento mori. “I can feel myself withering, drying up,” says Stallone, explaining that he’s leaving his LA mansion in search of new adventures out east.

While removal men pack up his home, Stallone begins to unpack the story of his life in that trademark drawl that now contains a gentle melancholy. The “snarl”, as he calls it, was a result of complications during childbirth and a concern for casting directors early in his career. But it’s the emotional scars of a childhood shaped by negligence and abuse that still trouble him. The approval and attention that he gets from audiences, he suggests, has always been a substitute for the love denied by his parents.

Such moments of self-analysis might come as a surprise from a man more associated with muscularity than sensitivity. Yet as Stallone revisits his major works, we are reminded of how films such as Rocky and First Blood — both of which he wrote or co-wrote — grounded the adrenalised action in personal experience and raw emotion. As he expands on how these action classics are also reflections of his relationship with his father, his feelings of outsiderdom and, later, his struggles with fame, we come to view them as partial Stallone biographies in themselves.

The fact that Sly is dominated by commentary on two franchises (of varying quality) in a 50-year career does undercut the efforts by effusive contributors such as Quentin Tarantino and Talia Shire to present him as a kind of Wellesian polymath. By contrast, Arnold Schwarzenegger reminisces about their 1980s macho heyday, when the fond rivals compared their muscles, props and box office takings — a contest now resurrected as “who has the better Netflix documentary”.

Stallone remains affably humble — proud of his successes, frustrated by his failures and acutely aware of his limitations. But the striking openness with which he talks about certain aspects of himself perhaps disguises how reticent he is on other topics. Beyond his parents, “family” is discussed as an abstract concept and there is no mention of any of his three marriages, the death of his son Sage or the multiple (denied and uncharged) accusations of sexual assault and abuse (including by his half-sister) that he has faced. That we barely notice his omissions is Sly at its slyest.

★★★★☆

On Netflix from November 3