FILM: Southpaw - GigslutzGigslutz

I have no doubt that one day the phenomenally talented Jake Gyllenhaal will win an Oscar however I’ll hedge a bet it won’t be for Antoine Fuqua’s daft, cliche ridden boxing movie.

A rehash of a dozen or so better films, this turgid drama features a spectacularly under developed script, one dimensional characters and fight sequences that almost completely fail to generate tension.

Billy Hope (Gyllenhaal) is a pro boxer who lives in New York with his wife Maureen (Rachel McAdams, doing her best Real Housewives) and their precocious daughter Lelia (Oona Laurence). We meet Billy winning the World Light Heavyweight Championship. We discover both Billy and Maureen have troubled backgrounds having met in an orphanage in Hell’s Kitchen (we find this out, rather implausibly, thanks to the HBO commentator during the fight) and she pretty much runs the show alongside Billy’s Svengali-like manager Jordan (Curtis Jackson). Billy sustains a bad eye injury after the fight and is persuaded by Maureen to quit the game and spend more time with his family.

At a charity event Billy is goaded by up and coming opponent, Miguel ‘Magic’ Escobar (Miguel Gomez), leading to a brawl that results in Maureen being accidentally shot and killed, leaving the hapless Billy alone and grief stricken. Hopeless with money, parenting, walking upright….Billy turns to drugs and alcohol and soon his daughter is taken into care and he loses his home. For a man who thinks nothing of showering his pals with gold rolex watches, Billy’s rapid decline in fortune is somewhat hard to swallow.

Determined to get his estranged daughter back, Billy signs up to work and train at a local gym owned and run by Titus ‘Tick’ Wills (Forrest Whittaker). Titus, the classic, seemingly gruff trainer with the heart of gold, turns out to have is own demons that need banishing.

Titus eventually agrees to help Billy get back to his best and win one last fight in order to get his life back on track.

There is a decent movie in here somewhere and while it has its moments, it ultimately fails to engage because hardly any of what transpires is believable. You can see what attracted Gyllenhaal to the part and he nails the physicality but it’s the characterisation he struggles with. He’s too intelligent an actor and you can see him thinking about every mannerism, even the accent veers from street thug to Upper East Side from frame to frame. With the right material he’s one of the best actors working today but here it never feels like anything other than a ‘performance’.

The talented McAdams is utterly wasted in a thankless part which is meant to be pivotal but is largely superfluous. All the female characters are on hand to support/criticise or love Billy. Whittaker is less mannered than usual but we’ve seen this character a million times before. Laurence gets a few decent moments and generates a believable chemistry with Gyllenhaal.

Technical aspects are OK – to his credit Fuqua tries to inject some life into the big finale (some neat POVs from each opponent) but sadly after nearly two hours it’s too little, too late.

Scenes start and end so abruptly that no time is spent on character development (the supporting players including Billy’s childhood friends, the other boxers, social worker Naomie Harris and smack-head Rita Ora – are so thinly sketched they may as well not have shown up) Fuqua and screenwriter Kurt Sutter are more interested in showy, melodrama than authenticity. James Horner’s intrusive score also sign posts turning points well in advance so any real tension is diluted.

Matt Williams