Southpaw

WARNING: This review is hidden because it reveals the content of the film.
Click here to show this review. “Southpaw” is one of those movies that are worth a watch more so for the performances by a very capable lead than the story itself. This boxing drama stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Billy Hope, the World light Heavyweight champion. He’s got a beautiful wife named Maureen (Rachel McAdams) and a loving daughter named Leila (Oona Laurence) Suddenly an incident involving his wife (you know what happens to her character if you’ve seen the trailers) leaves him at the lowest he’s ever been. He becomes a shadow of his former self, loses the right to participate in professional fights, his finances dry up and he loses custody of his daughter. He needs to get his life back in order, something which trainer Titus “Tick” Willis (Forest Whitaker) might be able to help him with.

This film continues the tradition of making a sport whose charm doesn’t translate that well to televised event look incredible on the big screen. Yeah I understand there’s that energy in a live event that can’t be duplicated when two athletes at the peak of their careers are beating the brain cells out of each other for real when you’re seeing a boxing match live, what else has it got? You always have the same camera shots and I’ve never thought that the few boxing matches that I’ve seen were ever really all that awesome to see because the shots are so far away from the people involved that you don’t get that crunch you would expect. Here obviously the fights are rehearsed and staged, but you’re not going to care because they are rousing. Billy is basically an animal in the ring. He’s a mad dog that can’t fight unless he gets hit. You can immediately see the problem there. He needs to get angry in order to lash out and defeat his opponent, but that kind of punishment over and over wears down on you. Billy gets just short of completely destroyed repeatedly every time he enters the ring because he’s like a wild dog that doesn’t really know how to fight, he just happens to hit harder than everyone else when he’s infuriated. Thanks to Gyllenhaal’s performance, you see that rage and you can feel it. In the ring where he’s taking hit after hit and his face gets all bloody, it’s the kind of fight you wish you would see every time a boxing match was shown on pay-per-view.

That quality does not extend to the script, which takes the easy path way too often. It’s a picture that successfully tugs at your heartstrings, but only because it would be impossible not to be affected by these cheap tricks. It’s not enough that we have that thing with Billy’s wife Maureen at the beginning of the movie, Billy’s rival has to be involved in order to make the inevitable grudge match that much more intense. This story did not need a bad guy. The bad guy is our protagonist, a man who is a slave to his rage and has been using it to make money for so long that he has no idea what to do with himself when he’s faced with a problem he can’t beat by punching it in the face. Similarly, it’s not enough that Billy loses custody of his daughter, but he has to be suspended from fighting and he has to lose all of his money. I think it would have been a better movie if he had simply lost the will to fight and he realized that his money couldn’t help him fix his problems. It would have been harder to write, but it would have been more original and more satisfying to see ultimately. Then they pile it on with his character by making Billy nearly illiterate. It’s one thing to have an underdog, but even Cinderella had it better than this guy.

You will notice the clichés present up until the very end but you can get past those because the fight are very good and you care the characters involved. This movie could have been completely lame, but the acting is consistently strong. I’ve already mentioned Jake Gyllenhaal but he’s worth noting again because this guy has shown himself to be a chameleon of an actor. Here he’s got the look of a fighter, his mannerisms are perfect and even the way he handles his face when he’s thinking makes you forget that this guy didn’t grow up in foster care before learning to turn his rage into something productive. I thought Rachel McAdams was equally as good, though she’s not in the movie that much. To be honest, I didn’t even realize who played the role until the credits rolled. Forest Whitaker is perfectly cast. They even use the way that his left eye is a little weird to develop his character and make him more credible. Finally, Billy and Maureen’s daughter Leila, played by Oona Laurence has the acting chops to keep up with all the adults involved. She becomes a lot more than just a fragile little girl that Billy need to find and keep safe. I was very impressed with everyone involved. Even 50 Cent, who plays a small role, was pretty good.

“Southpaw” is not the great film I was hoping to see, but if you’re excited to view this one, I think you’ll be happy enough with the results. It’s unfortunate that it plays it too safe to be all that memorable. I don’t think this Antoine Fuqua film is going to legs down the road. I’ll give it a 3/5, but in a good way. I enjoyed this one. It’s more than good enough for me to recommend it. (Theatrical version on the big screen, August 12, 2015)