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Friday, July 24, 2015
MOVIE REVIEW
Southpaw
The Roar And "Relegation" Of The Great White Hope
Jake
Gyllenhaal as Billy "The Great" Hope in Antoine Fuqua's boxing drama "Southpaw".
The Weinstein Company
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
FOLLOW
Friday,
July 24,
2015
“Don’t get hurt too bad,” advises Maureen (Rachel McAdams), or
“Mo”, as her husband and light heavyweight boxing champ Billy "The Great" Hope
(Jake Gyllenhaal) calls her. Billy is the recipient of Mo’s wise words but he
doesn’t take heed of them. Welcome to the routine but occasionally enjoyable
drama “Southpaw”, as directed by Antoine Fuqua, who mixes violence with a
daughter-father story and redemption set against a bureaucratic system after
tragedy strikes.
Billy is the film's great white hope in the squared circle, and a mocking
newspaper headline in one scene reads, “The Great White Dope”. Billy is his own
battered drug. The ring is the thing, and like most boxers Billy doesn't know
how to quit it. Think: Brokeback Boxer. “Southpaw” exalts his
ferocity and is seduced by his slow-motion snarl. Mr. Gyllenhaal gives Billy a
sorrowed monotone drawl and a feral, caged-animal demeanor in the ring. But
decision-making is Billy’s Kryptonite. He’s never made a decision in his life,
and flounders further after life hits him harder than any knockout punch.
Billy’s daughter Leila (Oona Laurence) pushes him to be a man, as does a rival
boxer who torments him.
Set in New York City, “Southpaw” is best when it chronicles systems — systems
that trap and frustrate the working class. Billy is stifled by his promoter
Justin Maines (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson), who threatens to bear shark teeth with
every smile; family is disrupted by Public Services. Billy is a casualty of a
lack of education, but his left-hand hook and brawn has kept him afloat in
America. Like the country itself, Billy knows violence and has lived and died
by it. Broke, Billy blanches at having to clean up a gym. He’d rather wipe the
floor with the blood of an opponent.
The film’s score, one of James Horner’s last, sits coolly and calmly, gracing
the rough contours of this dank and sometimes in-your-face film — its boxing
sequences are too dazzlingly fast at times to register. Mr. Horner is given a
brief and polite salute in the end credits.
What kept me interested in “Southpaw” was its banter between Mr. Gyllenhaal, who
strips away his customary smarts and buries them deep in a hunk of shredded
torso, and the always wily and charismatic Forest Whitaker as former boxer
now-trainer Tick Willis, a gym-owner who says he doesn’t train professional
fighters. The two actors’ chemistry pops on screen. “Southpaw” is engaging
when its two working stiffs co-exist as has-beens, robbed and denied of the
greatness they once tasted. When tragedy strikes the mentoring Tick, a tragedy
“Southpaw” pays scant attention to, he goes into overdrive.
Mr. Gyllenhaal effectively captures the physical language of all the characters
he plays ("Nightcrawler",
et al.), and even with not-so-great scripts like Kurt Sutter’s here, makes the
most of the material. He’s always arresting to watch, and Mr. Fuqua’s direction
elucidates the intensity and visceral aplomb he’s made his cinematic stomping
ground. Sometimes the director’s approach works (“The
Equalizer” and “Training Day”.) Other times (“Olympus
Has Fallen”) it doesn’t. As a drama “Southpaw” lacks consistency but
there are genuinely rousing moments in the ring. Otherwise "Southpaw" is an
ideal matinee watch, or a Netflix visit.
The working class are tools for the system in “Southpaw” and their dreams are
appropriated by failures and frauds. Only the film’s women can save them from
complete self-destruction. It’s interesting that real life has left Mr.
Jackson, as the film’s high-profile money-maker, a bankrupted star. On dual
planes overnight success when left unchecked becomes overnight failure —
essentially the message that “Southpaw” leaves you with.
Also with: Naomie Harris, Victor Ortiz, Rita Ora.
“Southpaw” is rated R
by the Motion Picture Association Of America for language throughout, and some
violence. The film's running time is two hours and three minutes.
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