Southpaw director Antoine Fuqua unfortunately shares a fatal flaw with the film’s lead character, light heavyweight champion Billy Hope: despite an indomitable work ethic and mountains of sincerity, all his best efforts fall apart when he doesn’t have a plan. Fuqua is capable of being a master craftsman, capable of making potentially forgettable crime yarns like Training Day and The Equalizer into masterpieces, yet spends the years in between churning out directionless busywork like Shooter, Olympus Has Fallen, Brooklyn’s Finest and King Arthur.
Southpaw falls somewhere in the middle, full of the desire to say something about the value of humility and focus, but lacking sufficient insight into its own premise to make the journey as meaningful for its audience as it is for its characters. We meet Billy Hope (Jake Gyllenhaal) as he prepares for the fight that will land him the light heavyweight championship of the world, the crowning achievement on his rise from an orphanage in Hell’s Kitchen. Everything and everyone he knows comes from his upbringing: his entourage and his wife are all childhood friends. He doesn’t know or think about anything beyond preparing for the next fight, leaving all financial and life planning to others. When his wife (a strangely underused Rachel McAdams) dies suddenly, the ensuing downward spiral leaves him with no home, no career and no custody of his young daughter. Left with nowhere else to go, Hope takes refuge in a gym owned by “Tick” Wills (Forest Whitaker), where he learns humility and focus from the father figure he never had.
Despite a compelling and believable performance by Gyllenhaal, the exact way Hope’s life ends up in tatters is frustratingly predictable and lifeless, full of overwrought standalone moments of waving guns and taking drugs. It all goes by like a montage in a latter-day Eminem song about trying really hard to overcome his anger and do right by his child. (Fittingly, the Detroit rapper’s song “Phenomenal” features prominently in Hall’s comeback montage.) The conclusion is similarly lifeless, full of empty drama and boxing movie clichés.
Where the film really comes alive is in the relationship between Tick and Hope, thanks to deeply effective and immersive performances by Whitaker and Gyllenhaal. Both actors clearly constructed elaborate psychological profiles and backstories for these two men. Gyllenhaal’s noted physical transformation is the most obvious sign of his commitment to the role, but every word out of his mouth, every facial tic and body movement belongs to this character he has fully inhabited. Whitaker, meanwhile, is an actor of such caliber that he could make audiences weep by reading from the phone book, and scenes involving Tick playing foster parent to the orphaned Hope could have been the stuff of movie legend.
Instead of making this the heart of the film, Fuqua suddenly discards what should have been the plot’s emotional core in favor of, well, nothing in particular. There is nothing climactic or revelatory about the way the film ends, and the emotional journey of its leading man is tossed aside to make room for shots of punching and a strange fixation on bikini-clad ring girls. There is a good movie hiding in the middle of Southpaw, tucked between an overly familiar introduction and conclusion, but it falls short of its potential as a boxing classic in another example of Fuqua punching above his weight.
Playing this week
Ant-Man
Inside Out
Jurassic World
Magic Mike XXL
Minions
Mr. Holmes
Paper Towns
Pixels
Southpaw
Trainwreck
Vacation
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213
