Review of Southpaw (2015) by Salamanca — 30 Jul 2015
The premise of this movie certainly showed some promise. Jake Gyllenhaal's performance was great. But man oh man. The writing is where this movie took the biggest hit.
Southpaw is emotionally manipulative to a serious fault. Terrible events happen one after another, and characters offer little to no comic relief to pad the otherwise unbelievable melodrama. More often than not, the writing doesn't land where it's supposed to. It ranges from cruel to unrealistic to downright laughable at times.
The film spends so much energy trying to make audiences cry, even when it makes absolutely no sense for the characters. There is one cringeworthy scene between Gyllenhaal and his daughter, where just when it looks like his daughter will reconcile with her father and go to one of his boxing matches, she absolutely flips out when he says he's not allowed to bring her there. She starts slapping him over and over again, and even goes as far as saying "I wish it had been YOU that got killed. Not mom." Uhm... Holy s***. Talk about out of left field.
Unfortunately it was at this point that the movie started to unravel for me. I started to realize how senselessly sad the movie was trying to be without any real logic or reason for doing so. One, or even a few tragedies back to back make sense and stay well within the bounds of realism. But when every single scene is trying to be exploitative with no logic or reason for doing so, and there's no comic relief to lessen the depth of despair on-screen, it starts to come apart. By the time Forest Whitaker revealed that one of his young trainees died, I was so disengaged that I could only chuckle to myself about the pointless tragedy being shoved down my throat.
All the melodrama could've been at least mildly forgiven if the payoff at the end was substantial. But even the end is relatively anticlimactic, tying an unrewarding bow on top of an already disheveled package.
Don't go see this movie unless you're all for manipulative writing and pointless sadness. If you love those things, you'll love this movie.
This review of Southpaw (2015) was written by Salamanca on 30 Jul 2015.
Southpaw has generally received positive reviews.
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