Southpaw Review

2015 in film

Jul 21

Written By Rendy Jones

Preview

R: Language and Violence

The Weinstein Company, Fuqua Films, WanDa Pictures, Escape Artists

2 hr and 3 Minutes

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Forest Whitaker, Rachel McAdams, Miguel Gomez, Curtis Jackson, with Rita Ora, and Oona Laurence

Editor’s Note: This review was originally published during my adolescence. Outdated language might be seen in these old posts. Since then, my thoughts and values have grown. This review is being presented as they were originally written, grammatical errors, shitty sentence structure, and typos galore. Because to do otherwise would be that same as claiming these flaws never existed.

BACKSTORY: Monday July 20th I go to the premiere of Southpaw, which was a pain in the ass to get into in of itself. Lemme tell you something, security guards are the scum of the earth. Last premiere, they fucked up my picture and said "oh its alright," now I get threatened of getting kicked out just because of waiting to take a picture with a celebrity. Nobody came, but it was whatevs. I saw Cameron Monaghan again and got a picture, I wasn't even Shameless to ask and left with a Southpaw cap.

STORYLINE: Boxer Billy Hope turns to trainer Tick Willis to help him get his life back on track after losing his wife in a tragic accident and his daughter to child protection services.

REVIEW: Antoine Fuqua is one of the most skilled directors who can hop into every genre and make something cool out of it. He went from buddy cop to dumb action, epic action, to somewhat smart action, and now he directed a boxing film. An Antoine Fuqua boxing film, that is triumphant in the acting portion, but is incredibly weak in the story. If this was an 80s film, this would've been a revolutionary boxing drama. But since we're in 2015, where countless of other revolutionary boxing films have been released, this is gonna be lost in a gutter 10 years from now. The acting in the film is great though. Jake Gyllenhaal is fantastic in this. Seeing him transition from a fucked up guy who has all his shit together (Nightcrawler) to a fuck up guy who lost everything and get get his shit together is remarkable. Gyllenhaal shows that he has more range than you expect. If you thought his acting peaked in Nightcrawler, you thought wrong. He brings the emotional beats through a majority in the scene. Two other strong powerhouses in this are Forest Whitaker and Oona Laurence. Whitaker's old yet wise lines of dialogue are cliched, but the way he delivers is amazing. Even when the movie took unnecessary turns he was there to bring emotion. Oona also delivers the emotion too, but for a very young actress, it hits you 2x as hard. You can relate and feel with her issues. Fuqua also does a great job directing the boxing scenes where there are moments where seeing the punches blown to another person's face is actually brutal and graphic. Even the last punch you see in the movie, makes you go GODDAMN! The film's huge problem is that, it hits all the notes and plot points of 94% of all boxing/comeback story movies. It has manages to be a bit original, but then immediately goes to generic territory.

LAST STATEMENT: The acting is powerful and all, but Southpaw is just another generic boxing film that has little sprinkles of originality.