Has All The Necessary Clichés, But None Of The Necessary Character Development

Rating: 3/10 (27 February 2017)

Despite the fact that boxing really hasn't been all that relevant for quite some time, boxing movies (or "fight movies" in general) are a favorite of mine. I count the "Rocky" series, "The Champ", "Real Steel", "The Fighter", and "Warrior" to be some of my favorite films of all-time. The reason? Boxing movies really aren't about boxing. They are about revealing character. There may not be a more straightforward sport: hit the other person repeatedly until him or you can't continue. Yet, it is through that ferocious simplicity that great character stories can be told and relationship examined. Sadly, "Southpaw" doesn't do nearly a good enough job with that character/relationship-building, instead just content to throw out all the old boxing clichés and hope they meld into something inspirational. They do not.
For a basic plot summary, "Southpaw" tells the story of Billy Hope (Jake Gyllenhaal), a light- heavyweight champion at the top of his game. He has beaten all-comers, has a beautiful wife (Rachel McAdams), and a lovely daughter (Oona Laurence). The only problem? Billy can't walk away from any fight (in OR out of the ring) and it leads to a brawl in which a great tragedy befalls him and his family. Starting over basically from square one, Billy finds a new trainer in Tick Wills (Forest Whitaker) and begins to rebuild both his own life and that of his newly-shaped family.
Despite my earlier praise for the "fight movie" genre, many of its movies do use rather predictable clichés when dealing with the actual boxing portion of the flicks. In "Southpaw", every single one of those clichés is used in order to try and create a large amount of drama. There is the riches-to-rags-and-back-again story, the grizzled old trainer with the odd methods, the fracturing of the family life due to a violent sport, and the corruption of the entire business. Heck, "Southpaw" even rips off the old "Rocky IV" sequence of having interspersed shots of two boxing training with different styles...this time just set to an Eminem rap tune instead of a score.
Unfortunately, all those clichés do is cover up for the fact that the characters in this movie are not well-written or well-conceived whatsoever, and the plot adds absolutely nothing new to the genre. It is completely hollow once you look past the surface material. Sadder still, there really isn't even anything that I can point to as being really good about the film, besides perhaps the acting of Gyllenhaal (which itself is even "just okay" as there is no dramatic meat for him to work with). To be honest, a more accurate rating of this film for me would be 1.5 stars. I'll round it up to two stars because it at least as some coherency to it, but that is truly the only reason. Nothing else made me care about what I was seeing.
I was very disappointed in "Southpaw", as (when I first saw its trailers a few months ago) I predicted it would be perhaps the best movie I've seen all year. Boy, was that ever a "punch to the gut" (pardon the pun). Instead, it ended up as one of the most bland, hollow movies I've seen in quite sometime. Unless you've never seen a fight movie in your life and want to catch up on the mechanics of how they work, "Southpaw" will likely underwhelm you to the point of boredom. It just doesn't have any dramatic substance.