Review of Southpaw (2015) by Steviegjd — 13 Aug 2015

Jake Gyllenhaal is absolutely terrific in this film. His performance is stunning. While she is on the screen, Rachel McAdams is excellent too. But the movie otherwise is extremely manipulative, very obvious, jam packed full of cliches and bursting with generalized caricatures (the trainer/mentor with a heart of gold, the evil promoter, the petulant child, and the purely and unredeemingly evil opponent).

And I'll say this: 50 Cent is a great rapper. But he is a stiff as an actor. He has a celebrity cache that many find appealing. But the guy really cannot act. If you don't know what's going to happen at the end of the movie as soon as the major conflict arises, then you either haven't read enough or seen enough movies to understand how these sorts of melodramatic cliche stories traditionally resolve.

I remember loving the first Rocky movie when I was a little kid, when it came out. Many of the "boxing picture" cliches were extant in that film. But I didn't know it then because I was a kid.

Yet Apollo Creed's character had depth and was more than just "the evil bad guy." What got worse as the Rocky movies went on was that the villains got dumber. This movie just jumps straight to the worst possible bad guy in the world.

Just terrible writing. While I was watching it, I knew a number of people were going to like it, but I also knew it was just not a very good movie. What a waste of a great acting performance.