Boxing Movie With A Good Story

Rating: 7/10 (24 July 2015)

I saw "Southpaw", starring Jake Gyllenhaal-End of Watch, Brokeback Mountain; Rachel McAdams-About Time, the Sherlock Holmes movies; Forest Whitaker-Taken 3, Criminal Minds_tv and Curtis Jackson-Power_tv, Last Vegas, and Oh yeah, he goes by another name, too; 50 Cent.
This is a boxing movie with a good story. It was originally supposed to star rapper Eminem but he backed out, saying that he wanted to concentrate more on his music. He does contribute some songs to the soundtrack. This is also the last movie that music composer James Horner scored before he died in a plane crash on June 22, 2015. It's directed by Antoine Fuqua, who also handled The Equalizer, Olympus Has Fallen and Training Day-FYI: Right now he is working on a remake of The Magnificent Seven. The title of the movie, Southpaw, refers to someone that is left-handed, in this case, a left- handed boxer. Jake plays the aforementioned lefty that is the light weight champion-his record is 43/0-and he has everything you could imagine. A beautiful wife, Rachel, daughter, big mansion, fine cars, etc. Then, a tragedy takes it all away from him and he ends up having to try to rebuild his shattered life. Curtis, his manager, even leaves him-why stay when he isn't making him any money. Jake ends up with Forest, a former boxer turned trainer that runs a gym. Jakes' boxing style used to be that he would take a lot of punishment-he got hit a lot-but then he would focus his anger and then win the match. This was not making Rachel a very happy camper, as can be expected, so Forest then has his job cut out for him; to make Jake a better boxer. It's rated "R" for violence and language and has a running time of 2 hours & 3 minutes. I thought it was a good boxing movie and I would buy it on DVD.