Rating: Jake Gyllenhaal sure can pick 'em. The past few years have seen him go from competent young actor to one of the finest talents working in Hollywood, with an eye for quality that would make Leonardo DiCaprio blush. Source Code, End Of Watch, Prisoners, Enemy, Nightcrawler - most actors would settle for just one of those in the same period. He's an actor who looks beyond the role to the film as a whole, working closely with directors to craft characters who fully inhabit their movies. To say he elevates them is a discredit to Duncan Jones, David Ayer, Denis Villeneuve and Dan Gilroy, but he certainly adds something special. With that in mind, Southpaw is a major come-down. This time, instead of flexing his muscles in a movie that would invariably be at the very least a polished work without him, Gyllenhaal is working relentlessly just to keep the film on the ropes, never able to deliver that knock-out punch. Gyllenhaal is Billy Hope, a boxer from the school of Homer Simpson - get punched a lot, then push the other guy over - whose continued success is bad because his wife (Rachel McAdams) doesn't like him getting hurt. Wifey dies, substance abuse kicks in and he's got to work his way back to the top from nothing. If you're raising your nose at the paint-by-numbers plot, then you'll gag at the execution. This has been advertised as a big hitter in terms of quality, right down the the Weinstein's getting in on the act. The end result, however, is incredibly tepid. It's a generic drama masquerading as an in-depth character piece; as much as Gyllenhaal gets right into The Champ's headspace, Antoine Fuqua (whose lack of a track record is evident from the posters looking fourteen years in the past to gleefully proclaim "From the director of Training Day...") just can't get the audience in on his level. He tries a variety of camera and editing tricks to keep bland dialogue scenes and necessary montages engaging, but there's no purpose to it. The boxing is tense and all, yet the brutality that haunts Hope never comes across - that trailer shot of him screaming blood at the camera are done in the first five minutes, after which it's business as typically usual. The use of slow-mo is particularly jarring - it's so sporadically used that it's less a throwback to Raging Bull than a needless hangover directorial trait from Fuqua's previous, The Equaliser. Worst of all, exposition is doled out with all the subtlety of a right hook. Immensely knowledgable commentators, shoe-horned flashbacks, out-of-nowhere public speeches - you name it, Southpaw trots it out. It all must be working on some level though. The finale is a tense, exciting sequence that feels emotionally charged in the face of obvious previous development. It's enough to bring the film back from the brink, leaving me content despite myself. The key is twelve year old Oona Laurence. She plays Billy's daughter and, thanks to the strength of their performances, the relationship between the two emerges through all the choppy filmmaking to anchor the movie. Gyllenhaal doesn't simply cycle through the estranged father motions and Laurence brings with her none of the weaknesses you expect of a child actor (keep an eye on that one). That the film throws so much else into the ring (Forest Whitaker's troubled retired trainer, a boxing rivalry that exists only to artificially inflate the personal stakes, a kid at the gym Hope works at with serious home troubles) is a real shame - distill Southpaw down to just its father-daughter relationship and you have something perfectly beautiful. What did you make of Southpaw? Agree with this review? Let us know down in the comments.
