Southpaw tells the story of a champion orphan boxer from Hell’s Kitchen who doesn’t grow up to be Daredevil but grows up to be Jake Gyllenhaal, who is just in beast-mode the whole film. When his wife is shot and killed at a charity event, Gyllenhaal’s character makes a series of grief-stricken poor choices that lead to him losing his title, his boxing license, his home and his daughter. His downward spiral is quick and sudden and at his lowest point turns to the one trainer who is capable setting him straight. It’s a tale of redemption which is pretty stock-standard for the boxing genre.
Now this film has a lot of parts that should really work for it: It’s written by Kurt Sutter, creator of Sons of Anarchy, so you know it’s going to be a gritty script. It’s directed by Antoine Fuqua, who brought us The Equalizer and Olympus Has Fallen, so you can expect gritty direction and it stars Jake Gyllenhaal, fresh off last year’s Nightcrawler looking grittier than ever. As a matter of fact, this film is so gritty that it should be compared to extra-course masonry sandpaper mixed with barbed-wire and broken glass fixed to a petrol-powered angle-grinder. But unfortunately, the film falls a little flat.
Don’t get me wrong, the performances are great. Gyllenhaal gives it his all, Forest Whitaker makes for a seasoned trainer and one of the strongest casting choices is young Oona Laurence, who plays Gyllenhaal’s daughter. She has a real emotional intelligence and strength that makes far more interesting as a character than the usual child-casting choices you’d expect. From a narrative perspective though, this film falls apart. There are many moments that feel like they’ve been omitted and other moments that, although they have a very specific emotional core, there is no way these scenes would play out that way in real life. For example, there is no way people would stand around doing nothing in the middle of a busy hotel when someone is dying and there is no way that a child would be left home alone after the death of her mother.
The rest of the cast are rounded off pretty well. We have Rachel McAdams at her most sexiest in years playing the role of Hope's wife. She is gorgeous throughout the film but not at the expense of just being cinematic eye-candy, and a real testament to her impact on the film is the fact that her presence can still be felt long after death at the start of the film. We also have Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson who plays Gyllenhaal's boxing promoter, credit where credit is due, it's a good performance for what it is and thankfully does not make continual nods and winks to the audience. The rest of the supporting cast have a very grounded real-world appeal which is easily the one-two combination of Fuqua and Sutter's influence.
Going back to Eminen, even though he never got to do his big follow-up to 8 Mile that still hasn't stopped him to contributing to the film in some way. He provides two songs for the film that serve as the centerpiece and the exit music for the film. Now I would never claim to be a fan of Eminen but when he does a good song, he does a good song, just think of One Shot from 8 Mile and you get some idea of what his contributions to this film are. Both songs are undeniably catchy and really serve to drive the film forward and leave you feeling pumped up as you leave the cinema.
The boxing in the film is really well done. Antoine Fuqua trained alongside Gyllenhaal throughout the lead up to the film and you can see in the filming and editing of the fight scenes how that training must have paid off for him as a director. Gyllenhaal has some real emotive moments throughout the film which could easily be seen as Oscar pandering and, to be fair, he could receive a nomination to make up for last year’s snub, but that is all that it would be. Once again, when discussing the narrative, there are some key moments that have been left out of this film that would have allowed Gyllenhaal to show some real range for his character and I think that is what ultimately will hurt his chance of an Oscar nod at this stage. He has certainly devoted himself to the boxing lifestyle, much like DeNiro did all those years ago, but unfortunately there’s not enough there on the page to raise him up to the standards set by Jake La Motta.
With some great talent involved both behind and in front of the camera, you are kind of hopeful that this film would transcend many of the other boxing movies and take its place amongst Raging Bull, but it still succumbs to many of the cliches and tropes of your tired and tested boxing movies. It aims for an emotional ending, and succeeds in someways, but it’s still only the original Rocky film that can move me to tears.
Southpaw gets Three out of Five Stars (or Three out of Five aggressively scary hybrid angle-grinders)
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