I’m going to invest about as much effort into writing this review as Southpaw’s creators invested into making an original film.
Billy Hope (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a man who punches other men for a living. He’s the best puncher around, the lightweight champion of the world. But after losing his temper and witnessing his wife murdered, he discovers that being the world’s greatest puncher doesn’t make him the world’s greatest papa. Hope has to fight to win back his daughter and his will to live.
This is a classic example of the current trend in Hollywood production – here, fresh from the mould, is yet another screenplay lifted straight from the pages of Save The Cat!, and it follows formula to the letter. So much so, in fact, that it feels like watching a pantomime wherein audience members can call out the next plot point five minutes before it hits the screen.
Hero berated by mentor – first ten minutes. Wife dead – 12-minute catalyst. The expected routine of Hope’s loss, betrayal and the road to redemption follows, along the way picking up a wizened new mentor who “doesn’t train pros no more”, learning how to dad, meeting a pointless villain and undergoing no fewer than three training montages. THREE.
It doesn’t matter that Gyllenhaal put in the hard yards to tank up for the part: it is, after all, his job. (Putting on a Stallone-esque slur and getting a good make-up artist is not “transformative”.) It doesn’t matter that both Forest Whitaker and Rachel McAdams are excellent actors. It doesn’t matter that 14 years ago, director Antoine Fuqua helmed Training Day, one of the best thrillers of its time.
What matters is nothing this film can offer. In this pathetically clichéd tripe, the hero winning back his championship belt won’t bring his wife back, nor make him a competent father. Learning how not to get hit in the face does not make one a role model. Each of his selfish actions are motivated by nothing more than a desire to progress the plot forward to another piano-laden, overemotional sequence of slo-mo sadness cued to pad out the runtime.
There’s no reason for Tick (Whitaker) to give up training. There’s no reason to leave the murder unsolved (there were witnesses everywhere and even the subplot of a false accusation is left hanging). There is no reason for 50 Cent, who is not an actor, to be in this film, nor the three Eminem songs that accompany him. There’s no reason to care about anyone or anything in this movie, and there’s no reason to ever call your main character Hope. Ever.
Southpaw left me no more interested in boxing than before, but it certainly did make me want to punch someone.
1/5 stars
Southpaw opens in cinemas on Thursday July 20.
