Southpaw follows Billy "The Great" Hope, the reigning junior middleweight boxing champion, having an impressive career, a loving wife and daughter, and a lavish lifestyle. However, when tragedy strikes, Billy hits rock bottom, losing his family, house and manager. He soon finds an unlikely savior in Tick Willis, a former fighter who trains the city's toughest boxers. With his future on the line, Hope fights to reclaim the trust of those he loves the most.
Jake Gyllenhaal giving a ferocious performance as a down on his luck boxer was truly a grand experience. He really stuck to his character by bringing such a mad man to the ring and a man who would strive to make his family a whole once again, one wondrous performance I must say. One person other than Jake that really stood out was Forest Whitaker, he easily gave one of the best performances of this year so far!
His performance here as Billy Hope is another triumph of his very serious and committed method acting style. Here, Gyllenhaal again undergoes a total physical transformation into a grizzled prizefighter with a buff hardened physique, scarred face and swollen eye. We feel every ache of his weary body as he shuffles in his gait. His speech is already slurred with probable nerve damage. We see and sense the ravages of his vicious sport on him.
He captured the character of an impulsive man who was not too savvy in life, and easily driven to violently angry tendencies. As Billy's world collapses around him, Gyllenhaal brings us all down to his hell with him. We totally see the unraveling of a man until a mere shadow of him remained. Then we would witness how he humbles himself as he tries to bring the shattered pieces of his life back together again. This was in addition to all the pounding he had in the boxing ring itself. This was truly an acting tour de force by Gyllenhaal which simply cannot be ignored.
The film has a nice, tight script when it comes to dialogue, but often misses the mark in terms of plot. It doesn't fail when it comes to emotional story lines, but it follows the conventional code, specifically the formulas seen in "Rocky" and "Rocky III." There are simply too many similarities to be found between these films, which causes the mind to wonder whether Sutter is as creative as we thought. Sutter's grit is definitely felt, but not his wit.
There isn't much to complain about when it comes to Antoine Fuqua's direction, other than that his common over-reliance on violence is felt and he throws in some very unneeded and distracting point-of-view shots during the final fight. I basically have only two problems with this movie. Firstly the writer seems to be playing darts with everything. He uses a ton of clichés and fails to add nuances to them to make them original. Basically he squanders the sheer potential of the script by his unoriginality towards certain things and his abundance of one dimensional character. Speaking on one dimensional characters Rachel McAdams and 50 cent give some of the most uninspired performances i have ever seen and I know for a fact they can both act. What a shame!
As a whole Southpaw is one of my favorite movies of the year and is a must see for people who enjoy boxing movies with a lot of heart thrills and action.
7.6/10 IMDb
59% Rotten Tomatoes
57% Metacritic
7/10 VERDICT
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