Southpaw

Dir: Antoine Fuqua

2015

**

Boxing films have been done to death. City Lights, Raging Bull, Rocky, Ali, Million Dollar Baby, Cinderella Man, The Fighter...the genre has many greats. If you're going to make a new boxing great then you really have to do something different or pick another sport (as Gavin O'Connor did with his brilliant 2011 film Warrior). The original idea behind Southpaw was indeed different but I'm not sure it was ever great. Initially, Southpaw was going to be a film based on the life of Marshall Mathers (AKA Eminem). It was to be a metaphorical sequel to 8 Mile with boxing taking the place of rapping. The fact it was considered is a sad reflection on the integrity of the film and music industry. It isn't even anything like Eminem's real life, so it's not very surprising that he pulled out after years of false starts. It is surprising that the film was made anyway, in many respects it was on the ropes before it even began. The clichés come thick and fast and all the original elements the film brings are not received, or indeed thought out, particularly well. Sub-plots were started but never finished, major events were quickly forgotten and the miraculous happened instantly, without even so much as a hint of the obligatory montage. When a boxing film can't even get the obligatory montage right, you know it's a lost cause. Antoine Fuqua looked like he was on the up with the surprisingly good The Equalizer but there is a severe lack of excitement about this overlong and over sentimental sports drama that makes it look like his earlier work. Credit to Jake Gyllenhaal for putting on serious amounts of muscle for the role, I just feel sad for him that all that effort was wasted thanks to a seriously rotten script. Forest Whitaker's performance was pretty good too but much like Gyllenhaal his character was poorly written. One of the main problems about the film was that the characters are just so unlikable. Win or lose, I couldn't have cared less. Gyllenhaal's character sorts himself out after a complete breakdown and fights for custody of his daughter but after everything he goes through, I was left thinking that actually, she would have been better off without him and honestly, he had done absolutely nothing to prove he was capable of looking after her, other than becoming wealthy again. The overall message is mixed and makes no sense. The story relies on what you remember from other boxing films rather than come up with anything original of its own. The fact that the seventh Rocky film Creed knocked it out of the ring and delivered the final blow in the same year has to sting somewhat.