Deliver Thrills, Heart, and Action despite the Generic Set-up

Rating: 7/10 (21 July 2015)

Southpaw is a film starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Forest Whitaker, Rachel McAdams, and 50 Cent. It is directed by Antoine Fuqua and is written by Kurt Sutter. This movie focuses on Billy "The Great" Hope(Jake Gyllenhaal) rise, fall, and eventual return to stardom as he treks through losing everything from his wife,Mo(Rachel McAdams), to custody of his daughter(Oona Laurence), to his title loss. He then meets Tick(Forest Whitaker) a train and ex boxer, who works hard to teach Billy a new style of fighting.
This movie is great! This movie had lots of positives. For one, I thought it carried more emotional heft than most boxing movies. For the first act and half of the second act the movie focused on the depression Billy goes through and his eventual light at the end of the tunnel, Tick. I found this well executed for the most part. Another Great aspect of the movie are the performances. Jake Gyllenhaal delivers a hauntingly quiet, arrogant, wounded, and above all angry performance. Though his performance was grand I do feel like he was a little miscast. Though I understand Eminem might not be the greatest actor, he stole 8 mile hand down and I believe he could've added just a tad bit more to the role. Oona Laurence offers one of the best child performances I've seen this year, with her role as Laila Hope. Though Gyllenhaal and Laurence give nuanced performances, the best performance by far was Forest Whitaker and definitely should be nominated for an Oscar. He was aggressive without being obnoxious. He was sympathetic with out being a tear jerker. Finally Eminem's son was Phenomenal! (See what I did there) Oh i almost forgot the direction was visceral and taut to say the least. He makes the action look brilliant and beautiful
I basically have only two problems with this movie. Firstly the writer seems to be playing darts with everything. He uses a ton of clichés and fails to add nuances to them to make them original. Basically he squanders the sheer potential of the script by his unoriginality towards certain things and his abundance of one dimensional character. Speaking on one dimensional characters Rachel McAdams and 50 cent give some of the most uninspired performances i have ever seen and I know for a fact they can both act. What a shame!
As a whole Southpaw is one of my favorite movies of the year and is a must see for people who enjoy boxing movies with a lot of heart thrills and action. Southpaw gets a B+ or a 7/10