Southpaw (2015)

** ½ out of ****

I am a sucker for the sport of boxing – I love a good fight more than just about anything. And I am an even more uncontrollable sucker for boxing movies; I've seen them all, most of them about ten times. Just this weekend there was a “Rocky” marathon on TV and before I knew it I had watched four of them in their entirety, and spent a lot of time pointing out scenes that had been deleted or edited for TV.

And “Rocky” (1976) really is the gold standard that I hold them all against. It was a film that was entirely character driven, and the characters' motivation was always their own fear and frailty. Add in the beautifully realistic dialogue, the heart-pounding soundtrack and exciting fight action (something none of the later “Rocky”s had), and you end up with the perfect boxing movie. So I went into “Southpaw” hoping it would hold some kind of candle to that standard.

It doesn't.

Not to suggest it sucks though. Jake Gyllenhall is Billy Hope, the world light-heavyweight champion who through a series of bad luck loses his wife, his fortune, his title and his daughter, in that order. Only by an act of sheer will is he able to hold onto his sanity. But that all lays the groundwork for what they were trying to do with this movie, which is to make it a drama about a lost man trying to get his life back on track, and just happens to be set against a backdrop of boxing.

After his wife is accidentally killed, Billy delves into booze and drugs, eventually leading to his daughter being placed in foster care. With his fortune gone and his boxing license revoked, he takes a job pushing a broom at a local boxing club run by Tick Wills (Forrest Whitaker). Together they start to try to rebuild Billy both as a fighter and as a person, as he battles the courts to get his daughter back and battles himself to re-discover his skills and desire.

Gyllenhall is in ridiculously good shape for this role. He looks exactly like what he is playing, a world class light-heavyweight fighter. Lean and trim, he is plenty muscular and clearly well trained in how to move and punch like a boxer. But it is Whitaker that really steals the show. His sad but tough character, vulnerable and mean at the same time, is the most “real” character in the film, and Whitaker delivers it with his usual aplomb. Not to take anything away from Gyllenhall, who does everything he can with the the script he was given, but Forrest is the real star of the show.

And the boxing scenes..... well they are just plain fantastic. Too many films (and the later Rocky films are the worst offenders) are totally unrealistic, with the protagonist taking punishment that would kill a dozen two-ton bulls. Here the action is intense but realistic, especially the climactic fight, which turns into an event that in reality would be guaranteed to win Ring's "fight of the year" award. It's action packed and punishing but never goes too far, and leaves it believable throughout.

Overall I found this film to be worth a watch, and it had some solid performances and very good action sequences. However I thought it was a bit too ambitious, trying to add up to more than the sum of its parts, where it falls a bit short. It's worth seeing, especially if you are boxing fan, but overall it's not one that will be remembered as any kind of classic, even within the genre.