Gyllenhaal Does Most of the Punching

Rating: 7/10 (29 July 2015)

Actors, studying how to make the most out of their careers, need only look at Jake Gyllenhaal's brilliant role-selecting strategies. Last year, he completely freaked us out as an emaciated, bug-eyed nightcrawler. Fast forward eight months later, and he's suddenly a burly furious boxer with an incredible eight-pack. The man seems to be challenging himself past intensity as a thespian, putting him on the same track as Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Joaquin Phoenix in terms of sheer range. Antoine Fuqua's Southpaw gives us a gut- wrenching look into champion boxer Billy Hope's life–a man who seems to be living the American Dream, displaying pure ferocity in the ring and taking hard punches to the face like an unfazed rock only to deliver the final blow. Every night, he comes back to a stupendous mansion and to a beautiful wife and kid (poignantly played by Rachel McAdams and Oona Laurence)until all the walls around him start crumbling.
As a moviegoer who entered the theater expecting a Rocky-like sports drama, I was pleasantly surprised by the immediate dark turn the movie takes. All of a sudden, gunshots are ringing, and Billy is slipping a hood over his head with a silver firearm tucked into his pants and his face convulsing with unalloyed fury. In Nightcrawler, Gyllenhaal was this absolute Machiavellian, deliberating his every move and knowing where each piece fits. In Southpaw, he's taken one too many punches to the skull and is absolutely clueless in his current state of circumstances, unable to direct his own life without the help of his wife, Maureen. A blatant lack of intelligence and an undisciplined lifestyle is more or less sending him down the opposite path from Lou Bloom. It's through yet another undeniably powerful performance though that we feel the utmost pity and sympathy for the once-celebrated Billy Hope as the luxurious carpet is swept from under his feet.
Fuqua's very urban and gritty visual style is a perfect fit for this subject matter, capturing the boxing scenes with the greatest level of authenticity. Gyllenhaal, himself, rigorously trained in the gym for many months so that he could fully sink into this boxer's skin rather than allow a stunt double to take the glory, which beautifully translates into what looks like just another HBO PPV fight. With sweat spraying and blood spurting in slow motion, everything makes us feel tense while the visceral energy on the screen is clearly pulsating. At times, the ferocious pummeling is even shot in first-person as the audience sees monstrous fists/gloves flying at the screen.
Unfortunately, it's in the second hour where little can be done to add any freshness into the plot, and thus all the innovative effort is concentrated in the pivotal boxing segments. In those moments, Fuqua and cinematographer Mauro Fiore utilize the coolest angles and camera techniques in order to dramatically convey to the fullest extent how this man really is fighting for his livelihood. Again—when it comes to its narrative—as soon as the film reaches the second hour, Southpaw apparently has no other tricks up its sleeve and consequently reverts to the old sports-drama formula that has been recycled for decades since Rocky's thunderous release. Critic Scott Tobias said it best on the Filmspotting podcast: "it's a Rocky movie that thinks it's Raging Bull."
Suddenly, its edginess begins to subside at a rapid rate and so does Billy Hope's savagely aggressive, anti-hero temperament. Essentially, it transitions from an initial hour of gripping unpredictability and emotional turmoil to a second hour of wild predictability and banality. Hope's redemptive arc is sharply evident at that point. And this is exactly what frustrates me about the sports movie genre in general: there's very little room for original storytelling anymore. There's only so much you can do in this limited space: either the underdog wins or loses in the end. (The only sports films I hold dear are Raging Bull, Moneyball, Foxcatcher, and of course, Rocky.) It's okay though; even when the story dulls and loses its flare, Gyllenhaal's impeccable vehemence is enough to keep us glued to the screen. Whenever he steps into that ring and the match commences, any Hollywood artificiality immediately wanes. There are no actors on-screen anymore; we're just witnessing two fighters swiftly jabbing one another.