A Powerful Cliché

Rating: 7/10 (5 August 2015)

Boxing films tend to follow a formula, Southpaw is no different. We see a champion at the top of his game, he is later faced with tragedy,and then he spends the rest of the film trying to repair his life and regain his title in one last fight against an impressive opponent who has done wrong by him. Also they didn't forget to include a good old training montage.Southpaw really does hit all the clichés of the genre.
There is more going for this movie than these clichés though. Firstly the performances are great. Jake Gyllenhaal delivers a performance that demonstrates his dedication to the role. He once again showed that he can transform himself physically to bring authenticity to his characters. Beyond his appearance he is very believable and likable which is actually quite important because when his character's life falls apart he spends a lot of time feeling sorry for himself and so the fact that the audience likes him and supports him is important so that they can feel sorry for him too. Another fantastic performance can be seen from Forest Whitaker although I think the stand out supporting performance in the film is from Oona Laurence who played the daughter of Gyllenhaal's character. I thought she gave an incredibly compelling performance especially for such a young actress with little. Her scenes with Jake Gyllenhaal were excellent too they had good chemistry and they really played off each other well as father and daughter.
The high standard of the performances helped to sell the drama in Southpaw, this was a relief to me because it meant that at least whilst watching the film the audience forgot that the what they were seeing was really nothing new or particularly special. Overall though the drama in Southpaw was quite captivating. As I've already mentioned the performances from Gyllenhaal and Laurence were great and so some scenes I thought were genuinely heartbreaking.
I can't review a boxing film without commenting on the scenes where there is actual boxing. Frankly they were superb. The way Antoine Fuqua decided to film the fight scenes is very raw and it's clear that realism was important to him. There were some brilliant shots in one of the fights where the camera acted as a first person view from one of the boxers and the opponent fighter would punch at the camera whilst it ducked and swayed. It was executed with skill and was therefore effective at throwing the audience straight into the brutality of a boxing match.
Southpaw was very entertaining, and as I didn't go into this expecting a masterpiece I was satisfied. It certainly wasn't the most original film I've ever seen but the powerful performances and the realistic boxing matches carried it over its cliché filled plot.