Southpaw is more square-jawed, darkly-lit, extremely predictable entertainment from director Antoine Fuqua (The Equalizer), who seems very content to embrace clichés and never look back. He’s always been a great shooter (The Replacement Killers POWER) with a terrific eye for detail and visual composition, but he’s never better than the script he’s given, and here, working with a bluntly effective if wholly routine narrative from Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter, Fuqua lets his ace star, Jake Gyllenhaal, do all the heavy lifting. And once again, Jake G. delivers — this guy is just crushing every single role of late, and he brings a buff and vigorous determination to the role of a broken down boxer trying to win his entire life back after suffering tragedy after tragedy. This movie is sort of odd in that it feels overstuffed but not unwieldy; it’s a boxing movie, a vigilante justice film for a spell, and a father-daughter drama that couldn’t be more on-the-nose if it tried. You’ve seen almost every single scene and set-up that Southpaw has to offer in countless other films, but never blended together quite like this, and while every moment is telegraphed from the get-go, Gyllenhaal’s brutish and extremely physical performance carries the film, keeping it watchable if never surprising.
Rachel McAdams shows up in the first act looking all trashy-hot, Forest Whitaker does some reliably solid supporting work, and the boxing scenes are ferociously if unimaginatively shot by Fuqua’s cameraman of choice, Mauro Fiore, stressing tight angles, shutter retention tactics, and in a few instances, some incredible wide shots. The film features one of the final scores by James Horner and it’s one of those amp-up-the-big-moments crowd pleasers that fits for the story. Outside of Training Day (David Ayer’s screenplay is genius), Fuqua’s best film, for me, was his underrated period action drama King Arthur for producer Jerry Bruckheimer; if you’ve never see it, I suggest checking out the unrated director’s cut on Blu-ray. It has a rock solid script, beefy performances, and it looks absolutely fantastic thanks to the gritty and misty cinematography by Slawomir Idziak. I also enjoyed Tears of the Sun more than most, and have always wondered what that movie would have been like had the studio not tampered with the final cut; the editing process on that film, as I recall, was filled with complications. I’ve still not seen Olympus Has Fallen. But back to Southpaw – it’s the sort of movie that you can see coming a mile away, but that you can still engage with because of the performances and the familiarity of the material.
Podcasting Them Softly 