Meet boxer Billy “The Great” Hope (Jake Gyllenhaal). He’s the undefeated lightweight champion of the world at 43-0. His style of boxing is to allow his opponent to punch him in the face over and over and over and over and over again until he gets angry enough to knock his opponent out. We’re witness to this “style” in the opening minutes of Southpaw as Hope comes charging toward the screen, yelling at the top of his lungs before a jab hits him square in the nose. No bother, shake it off, yell some more, get hit a lot more, and then come back and win the fight…. eight, nine, ten… You’re out!
After retaining his title, the next logical business move for Billy would seem to be to give #1 contender Miguel ‘Magic’ Escobar (Miguel Gomez) a shot, but his wife, Maureen (Rachel McAdams), is urging him to take some time off just as his manager (50 Cent) is offering him a two year, three fight deal with HBO worth $30 million. Billy decides to hold off on a decision for the time being and spend some time with Maureen and their young daughter, Leila (Oona Laurence), but tragedy soon strikes at a charity event sending Billy’s life into what may be the all-time cinematic tailspin.
Following an altercation with Escobar, as he’s leaving the charity event, Maureen is shot and killed. In the days that follow Billy loses all of his money, appears damn near suicidal and eventually loses custody of Leila. With no money and no home he seeks the help of trainer Tick Wills (Forest Whitaker), a man with his own demons. In need of a job and a trainer, Tick agrees to help Billy so he can get his daughter back and his life back in order.
Directed by Antoine Fuqua (The Equalizer, Training Day) and written by Kurt Sutter (“Sons of Anarchy”), Southpaw has all the dramatic dexterity of a cat poster, but I can’t deny it packs a certain amount of emotional heft that had me just as invested as I was annoyed.
Everything about this movie is silly and ridiculous, Sutter may as well have broken Billy’s arms and legs while he was tearing the rest of his life apart. One thing after another beats this one-time champ into the ground, establishing the obvious redemption story we know is coming. Had it not been for the early performance from McAdams and the continually pained effort of Gyllenhaal I’m not sure how the film would have turned out. There’s enough here to both frustrate and impress, but in the end it’s near impossible to take seriously.
The boxing scenes in-particular are awful and while it has become standard, cinematic operating procedure to feature fights wherein the characters pummel one another into bloody meat sacks, in this instance it’s rather unbearable. As I said, the opening fight is just brutal and any referee would have called it before Billy was ever allowed to get angry enough to magically deliver the knockout blow. A second fight finds Billy unwilling to defend himself, arms at his side and yet the referee just allows him to get beaten until Billy’s trainer has to throw in the towel. Add to that the awful sound mix with every single punch sounding like the last and it’s just too much to take.
The only thing that keeps the film together is the narrative is stereotypical enough, we expect most all that’s to come. We can see the back-stabbing, the downfall on the horizon, the angst, the defiance, the hurt, the love, the pain and with expectation comes a level of acceptance. We accept these cliches and obvious bits of storytelling, which then puts the film on the actors’ shoulders and, for the most part, they pull it off, keeping the film from entirely derailing.
Gyllenhaal gives a strong performance as Billy Hope, even if many characteristics of his personality annoyed or frustrated me. I wasn’t sure why Sutter felt it was so important to make him so dumb. I’m not saying he had to be a genius, and yes, both he and his wife are products of New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, but his intelligence or lack thereof might have been easier to accept had we explored that aspect of his character rather than merely been presented with surface level exposition.
The obvious comparison is to Sylvester Stallone‘s Rocky Balboa, a character we never looked at as intelligent, but he was resourceful in his own right and we got a flavor for his character based on his surroundings. With Billy we’re given so little and thrown into the mix so quickly all we’re witness to is a man in immediate decline and so we’re forced to sit back and wait until he hits absolute rock bottom before the inevitable climb back to some semblance of normalcy. Gyllenhaal does, however, force us to carry his pain. He gives Billy enough life and humanity that we feel for him at every turn, even if we’re rolling our eyes at the narrative direction the story is taking us.
And that’s what Southpaw is, an effective piece of manipulative filmmaking. It’s not a good movie, but through the performances we’re kept engaged. You know, come the end of the film, there’s going to be one last bout and after an hour and 45 minutes of absolute despair you’re wanting some measure of redemption for a character that clearly doesn’t deserve everything bad that’s happened to him. The credit in this regard goes to the actors, chiefly McAdams for helping set up the narrative, Gyllenhaal for carrying it and Oona Laurence as Billy’s daughter as her cries alone are effective enough to give you an emotional jab, but the entire time you’re able to see through the manipulative storytelling and realize the movie itself isn’t all that good.
