An emotional and heartfelt movie about emotional and physical pain but also finding redemption and perseverance along the way.

Rating: 7/10 (31 August 2015)

This movie is undoubtedly vigorous and impactive. Powerful performances by Jake Gyllenhaal as Billy Hope, Oona Laurence as Leila Hope and Rachel Mcadams as Maureen Hope. These combined actors are able to convey a fantastically emotional story about Billy Hope fighting the urge to not allow his anger control him as it previously got the best of him. This led to the death of his long-term friend and wife Maureen Hope. The result of Maureen's death leads to Billy spirally out of control to the point where he tries to commit suicide by crashing his car with extreme speed into a tree nearby the family home. The repercussions of his impulsiveness leads to him losing temporal custody of his daughter, Leila. Billy makes a remarkable and positive change by getting a job at a boxing gym. Billy gradually shows good signs of being able to take care of his daughter again as he controls his anger and is supporting himself.However, Leila holds too much anger towards her father as she blames him for her mother's death. This scene is among one of the best throughout the movie as Leila hits her father and cries that he should of died instead of her mother. Billy understands his daughter needs to heal and continues to fight for her, literally by training to fight his opponent Miguel 'Magic' Escobar played by Miguel Gomez, that caused the escalation and death of Maureen. Redemption, familial love and perseverance is found at the end of the story as Leila and Billy try to heal themselves and focus on caring about one another and not letting boxing consume their lives again.
Overall this movie takes us on a journey to care, hate and sympathise with the characters. Billy shows great strength emotionally and physically by conquering his anger issues and focuses on doing good with his skills of boxing. This movie has proved to be an emotional roller coaster as the audience are able to relate to the emotions of what each character is feeling especially due to the circumstances they are put through.
A beautiful piece.