Southpaw Review

"A fighter only knows only one way to work."
                                                                         -Billy Hope



I'm not sure what was happening in the marketing department, whether they were excited to have Jake Gyllenhaal in their film, or they thought they really needed to push this to put it on Oscar level, or what, but the trailer basically showed you the whole movie when it was dropped. For those who haven't seen the trailer don't. This is a great film, you should go see it, but stay away from the trailer if you want to be surprised and feel the beats naturally.

Now, Southpaw is about Billy Hope, a boxer, who is the champion of his weight class. After a tragedy occurs, and his downward emotional spiral goes deeper and more dangerous to him and his loved ones, the court decides to take his kid away. Now he has to clean up his act and try to get his reputation back on top.

The beginning is the hardest part of the film to get into, for me at least. You're introduced to the character rather quickly, and without any depth to them, so at this point they're just names. Then we go in the arena with Billy Hope as he is getting the snot beat out of him. The camera work is so effective that you feel like you're going through what Billy Hope is going through. I thought this was one of the highlights of the movie, but character-wise the first third of the movie is introducing every character, having a quick feel for each, introduce the sad scene to make us feel for these characters and then we see Billy spiraling into a pit of emotional despair. This is a lot to go through to get to the real story, which is about Billy Hope reconnecting with his daughter.

 The characters, especially Billy, are dragged through the mud in the beginning of this film and you feel like you are too. I found it very hard to identify or find a good likable character, for the most part everyone at this time was just a stereotypical summer movie actor doing a job, but once you get past the first third of the movie,  and after you see Billy Hope being dragged down to emotional hell, do you start to invest in these characters. I would like to say one of the reasons I'm not too fond of the beginning of the film is that it went too fast, but thinking about it for the past two days I'd have to say the opposite. There were a few scenes that I just thought lingered a little longer than necessary, which made it feel longer than I think it should have been. And while it seems like I'm ranting right now, I'm really not, I just want to establish that it was hard for me to get into the film; however, once Forrest Witaker comes on screen the film starts being very good and picks up with even pacing which eventually elevates everything to greatness.

The acting is amazing. You really feel that Jake transformed in this role, and if you saw what he looked like in Nightcrawler then yeah he changed a lot for this role. He does a great job portraying a character that had everything (a perfect life) and then in seconds he lost everything (a living hell). Once his daughter is taken away you really see how awkward he is trying to reconnect with her, and I found that fascinating. Speaking about his daughter, she does a wonderful job too. Granted I wish I got to see more of how she was doing in the orphanage, I thought she did a great job for portraying a role that I think is a lot to ask for from a kid. Forrest Witaker was the one who really elevated this movie though, usually Jake has such strong performances and steals the movie, but Forrest looked like he had more opportunities to stretch his acting chops and when it comes for his crying scene it broke my heart seeing all his emotions bursting out as he takes it out on a punching bag.

The cinematography is stunning. Whenever they show a fight scene it looks like you're watching a wall sized plasma screen TV and you turned on HBO. In fact they even used HBO logos and stuff to "broadcast" the fights. The camera literally looks like it's in the ring with the actors, and at times it looks like they are actually punching the camera. They get in close whenever a punch really hits home, and when someone is knocked down they go slow-mo so you can see their body reverberating from the impact of hitting the mat. Sports fans, and especially boxing fans, will love this.

On an emotional scale my eyes were watering up a few times during this film, and you really feel like you're watching characters rather than actors on the screen. When it came time for a training montage or even during the fights it made my blood start pumping and I felt the adrenaline as blood and fists were flying all over the place, and after the credits started to role, and I was walking back to the car, I had an urge to go work out.

Overall, this is a great film with minor things that I thought could have improved it. The fighting, cinematography, and acting was all top notch and I wouldn't be surprised if there were at least Oscar nominations on this film, but I did think it took a little while to get invested with the characters and I did want to see more scenes from the kid's perspective. The film was dedicated to James Horner, who is the composer and recently died, which I thought that was really sweet, because he's one of my all time favorite composers. After I watched this the only thing I could think about for the next few days was how I felt about the movie and I really wanted to go see it again, which I will. With July coming to the close, and Southpaw leading the way to the pre-Oscar season all I can say is this is a really great film that I hope will still be remembered after being bombarded with all the fantastic looking films that are coming out this fall.