Southpaw Review

To really depict fighting in cinema, you need a trained visual eye that can make the characters inner struggles come through in every movement in their physical confrontations. Whether you're bringing to life a large scale battle involving multiple armies or just a fistfight in an alleyway, it's crucial that the director of such carnage filled sequences have a way to depict such brawls in a way that doesn't overwhelm the rest of the story.

That's probably the biggest flaw to be found in Southpaw, as director Antoine Fuqua struggles with the movie on a visual level. Considering that the story is about world famous boxer Billy Hope (Jake Gyllenhaal) spiraling into a funk after a personal tragedy, you're gonna have scenes of shirtless dudes punching each other in a square in this movie, it's inevitable. Depictions of Billy boxing in the ring aren't bad per se, but very rarely do they get across the sort of emotion or power the film wants to convey.

Flaws become even more apparent in simply dialogue exchanges between characters, with choppy editing coming into the forefront as numerous scenes can't stay on one short for too long, as if Fuqua is worried that audiences will become bored if they stick around on one particular angle for an extended duration of time. There's this conversation between Billys manager, Jordan (50 Cent) and Maureen, his wife (Rachel McAdams), that careens from simply medium shots of them talking...to a bizarre shot of just Jordans hands. Is this symbolism? Hell if I know. If it was intending to get across a deep message in the form of an impromptu visual cue, it missed the mark, only taking me out of the movie and leaving me bamboozled.

The proceedings succeed far more when it comes to just focusing on the characters, who are played by some extremely talented actors. As the lead of the entire movie, Gyllenhaal brings the physicality that's essential when one is playing this sort of seasoned fighter, but he also brings a tortured spirit to the role in his darkest moments, especially when interacting with his daughter. Forrest Whitaker, playing Tick, Billys trainer, is similarly top-notch, and a scene late into the story where he and Billy sit and talk after Tick suffers his own personal loss is probably the best moment in the film. It's so simple in design, yet it thrives on that minimalist set-up and some great acting.

Surprisingly, most of Southpaw doesn't rise to that quality, instead settling for complacency. Kurt Sutters script pretty much goes from the conventional story points that typical boxing movies go through without really bringing anything new to the table. That's not necessarily bad (though I found it peculiar how the prospect of Billy continuing to box in the future is played up as a tragic idea at the start of the film, while any sort of consequences deriving from him continuing to engage in the sport are never brought up again), but it does leave me wishing that the talented actors were given some more focused directing and editing, as well as a script that had a bit more boldness in its DNA, to work with.