Review of Southpaw (2015) by Foxgrove — 28 Jul 2015

Southpaw is the title, but very poor is the verdict of this seen it all before boxing movie which is an over long bore. Harvey Weinstein has gone on record as saying that this is the movie that will win Star Jake Gyllenhaal an Oscar.

However, Gyllenhaal is so badly let down by a dire script that hangs out every cliché known to the boxing movie genre, that I don’t believe any self- respecting Academy member would allow that to happen.

In truth Gyllenhaal is fine, and definitely the best thing about the overwrought melodrama that this is, but his performance is no classic in the making. The film is essentially a paint by numbers exercise where the direction is uneven at best and laboured at worst.

Director Antoine Fuqua (now there’s a name to conjure with) prolongs almost every scene beyond endurance. The first half an hour is a lot of talk and the film only starts to get to grips with a semblance of a storyline following a fatal shooting.

From here on in cliché follows cliché as the film tries to out- do ‘Rocky’ with no success. Basically this is about a boxer falling from the top to the bottom, losing his daughter along the way and doing everything to get both her and his successful boxing career back to the original status quo.

The awful script is manipulative and there are many emotional moments for anyone buying into this predictable rubbish. The scenes with the daughter are squirm inducing, especially the one in which she keeps slapping her father for letting her down.

Even the climatic fight is drained of any tension as one knows the outcome due to the obvious nature of the film. Subtlety surprise or originality are nowhere to be found here. The editing also misses a trick and it is rare for a fight scene to be so singularly lacking any tension or power.

Overall this is film making at its worst. Commercial, unoriginal and just plain dull.