Toronto film festival: There’s a knockout central performance from Anthony Ippolito in this otherwise rather lightweight making-of comedy drama

We first see Anthony Ippolito sauntering into a harsh spotlight in I Play Rocky’s opening frames. He’s squirrelling around an audition space, physicalizing the battle between his nerves and the stubborn self-confidence that gets him into those rooms, knowing casting agents typically count him out. He collects his wits, puts his chest out to perform as “Thug #2”, and bellows out the lines, in that deep slow growl as though he’s speaking while chewing through a New York striploin. We don’t find out if his character got the “Thug #2” gig, but in those opening moments, Ippolito nails his part as Sylvester Stallone.

Ippolito is a casting coup for I Play Rocky, Peter Farrelly’s lightweight comedy about the making of Rocky, which leans hard on easy nostalgia for the 50-year-old Oscar-winning crowd-pleaser. His looks, physicality and performance are so on point and uncanny that I never broke away from seeing Stallone, not even when he’s recreating scenes so firmly lodged in mine and pop culture’s memory. The movie’s title says more than it lets on, because Ippolito doesn’t just play Sylvester Stallone playing Rocky Balboa. His performance, perhaps intentionally, blurs the line between Stallone and Rocky. When Ippolito’s Stallone is flirting with his soon to be wife Sasha (AnnaSophia Robb, soulful) or sitting in an office sparring with producers Irwin Winkler (PJ Byrne) and Robert Chartoff (Toby Kebbell), trying to convince them he’s worthy of a shot, I saw Rocky.

Toronto film festival: the two-time Oscar-winner is an unusual killer in a compelling mix of pulpy action and family drama

Latif, the solemn hitman played soulfully by Mahershala Ali, carries diapers in his kill kit. I can’t tell if that’s because they come in handy when soaking up pools of blood on the fly; or because at a moment’s notice the hitman has to switch over from his brutal occupation to daddy duties. Or perhaps it’s both for this contract killer who comes armed with a blade and baby wipes, who takes lives and nurtures them, whose life is composed of jarring and poetic contradictions, much like the movie he’s in.

Those contradictions are on full striking display in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’s opening moments, an explosive close-quarters brawl in a restroom, after which Latif uses the baby wipes to clean up the mess he made with that blade. It’s a lovely image, in a film filled with so many, cutting right through the tension within this character. It also feels like a wink to the audience from Ali and writer/director Bassam Tariq, a way for them to acknowledge right off the top the distracting mess made by that other Blade.