Film review: Southpaw - Knocked out

Jake Gyllenhaal ends a winning streak of gripping films with Southpaw, a boring boxing drama

One look at Jake Gyllenhaal’s recent filmography and it becomes clear that he is an actor who puts great deal of thought into his choices. There have hardly been any missteps for Gyllenhaal in the past five years, as he has solidly delivered with films like End of Watch, Enemy or Nightcrawler that should have, but didn’t, earn him an Oscar nomination for best actor in a leading role. Gyllenhaal’s latest, the muscular boxing movie Southpaw, sadly, discontinues this trend.

Directed by Antoine Fuqua, Southpaw is not a terrible film. In fact, it is his best attempt after a very long time. But still, it is nowhere as good a film as it should have been. While large stretches are technically well-made, the plotting is simply cringe worthy, especially in the second half, where certain choices the protagonist makes are very questionable (such as working together with a shady business partner who betrayed his trust earlier in the film).

Gyllenhaal’s histrionics raise such portions of the film to undeserved heights. He plays Billy Hope, an orphan from Hell’s Kitchen, New York, who has steadily boxed his way up to a sold-out title bout in Madison Square Garden. His wife Maureen (Rachel McAdams), whom he met at an orphanage when they were kids is always by his side, no matter what. They have a daughter too, played by an impressive newcomer Oona Laurence, who matches Gyllenhaal in every scene they share.

Southpaw is one of those films where if you have watched the trailer, then you have seen everything. And that’s worse for a sports movie, where the script follows a predictable narrative anyway. There will be a fight at the beginning, where the hero will win. Something bad will happen soon afterwards. After a downward spiral, the hero will hit rock bottom, only to gather himself up and eventually come back hard to redeem himself. It is a story told countless times and if done right, still has a strange emotional pull, but in this version, it just doesn’t feel to be convincing enough.

If only the film would have had some humour or heart, it would have fared better. There are only glimpses of that. Hope’s battle-weary coach Tick Wills (Forest Whitaker) has some funny moments in a bar, even though it’s not clear if they are meant to be hilarious. Curtis James Jackson III (50 Cent) appears as a slimy boxing promoter, who pursues money, not relationships. The film should have featured him more, because his character seems to be the most interesting one out of the entire ensemble and actually stands out for something, even if it is negative.

After playing skinny creep Lou Bloom in Nightcrawler, Gyllenhaal’s transformation into a buff boxer is commendable. He looks the part, but that is not what the film is about. That’s just his job. The real pity is that there isn’t much else to say about Southpaw other than ‘Gyllenhaal went to the gym’. Take that — and him — out of Southpaw and you are barely left with a film.



Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, August 30^th, 2015.