Southpaw (2015)

Jake Gyllenhaal is one of those actors I’ll blindly watch any movie of. Last year he was amazing in Nightcrawler, for which he lost a lot of weight. In Southpaw he plays a boxer and he has gained a lot of weight giving him an impressive muscular appearance. This film was originally meant as the second big film for rapper Eminem after 8 Mile. The story was based on the issues he was dealing with the last few years, with boxing as a metaphor for it. When Eminem decided to focus on his music he was replaced by Gyllenhaal (Eminem is present on the soundtrack though).

Billy Hope (Gyllenhaal) is a boxer at the top of his game. After more than 20 fights he is still undefeated, has the title and makes millions per fight. Together with his wife Maureen (Rachel McAdams) and daughter Leila (Oona Laurence) he lives in a huge villa. Life can’t seem to get better and Maureen suggests that Billy needs to start fighting less because he seems to fight less convincingly. Boxer Miguel “Magic” Escobar (Miguel Gomez) keeps challenging him though and during a benefit gala it all goes south. He loses his wife, isn’t allowed to fight for a year making him lose everything. When the judge also decides he can’t take care of his daughter anymore it means the end of his world. He has to prove himself in order to get his daughter back and decides to get a new trainer (Forest Whitaker) to help him get better.

As it so happened, the day before I watched Souhtpaw I saw the Uwe Boll film Attack on Wall Street (yes, you sometimes have to get out of your comfort zone a bit), in which the main character almost literally goes through the same things. It annoyed me in that film and so did it in this movie. It is filled to the brim with clichés, never surprising the viewer. As this is a boxing movie there are training montages, promoters that can’t be trusted and a difficult relationship with the trainer.

It is a shame because both Gyllenhaal and Whitaker are both solid in their roles, but the material simply disappoints. Director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, Olympus Has Fallen, The Equalizer) doesn’t succeed in pushing it to a higher level. The boxing matches are mainly shown from a TV perspective (with a few point of view exceptions). The fighting looks realistic, but the tension is because of the way it is presented is insufficiently present. It makes Southpaw a movie which isn’t a contender to the title.