Hitting as hard as a phantom punch

Jake Gyllenhaal acts next to professional water salesman 50 Cent in "Southpaw." Image courtesy The Weinstein Company

To paraphrase legendary wordsmith Yogi Berra, watching “Southpaw” feels like déjà vu all over again. It's a Frankenstein's monster of a movie, taking the notable elements from classic boxing films and mashing them together into one ugly, misshapen, kind of racist and truly uninspiring film. It also wastes two rather good performances from Jake Gyllenhaal and Rachel McAdams while providing an inordinately sizable amount of screen time and dialogue to aqua mogul 50 Cent.

When I say “Southpaw” is a compilation of pretty much every boxing movie to come out in the last say 40 years, I mean it's essentially “Rocky,” “Raging Bull,” “The Fighter,” and “Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out” mixed in one easy to drink Capri Sun pouch. It’s not exactly the most imaginative mix either: Gyllenhaal is an orphaned, aging albeit undeafeated fighter who enjoys getting punched in the face as part of a strange ascetic ritual. His orphan wife, McAdams, keeps the family afloat until she dies in a shooting at a charity benefit. Gyllenhaal proceeds to fall apart, has his daughter (Oona Laurence) taken by the government, and must rebuild his career with help from trainer and Bagger Vance equivalent Forest Whitaker. Some training montages occur, another character is added so the filmmakers can kill him off, and Naomie Harris stops by to say hello.

“Southpaw” goes on like this for about two hours of painful stupidity, interrupted periodically with some uninspiring boxing scenes featuring poor Gyllenhaal screaming just before he gets punched in the face. Not sure if getting punched in the face repeatedly is the best tactic for winning a fight, but it does work as a parallel for his life before he learns how to fight with a modicum of self preservation and intelligence. And it is kind of funny to watch him scream in slow motion as a punch comes at his face as if he were Little Mac facing Mr. Dream. 

Also a better fight scene than anything offered in "Southpaw."

What it doesn't make for though is compelling cinema, especially given the lack of originality within the story. I complain frequently and vociferously about films that use the paint-by-numbers approach in their plotting; it's a problem of strong annoyance when movies take the standard storytelling tropes and do little to nothing to do something with those cliches. And yet here we are with “Southpaw,” which straight up lifts scenes from “Rocky” and even uses the contrasting training montage in “Rocky IV” – you'll know it if you opt to actually see the movie – to emphasize how Gyllenhaal's back-to-basics training is the purer way to prepare for the requisite big fight against the big, mean opponent.

That last point touches on “Southpaw's” biggest problem, and really an issue with many boxing films. The character the audience is supposed to root for – the scrappy underdog who has little chance of winning but does anyway – is almost always the white guy facing off against the faster, stronger black or Hispanic athlete (in this case Miguel Gomez's Miguel Escobar). The racist undertones are more like overtones, with the stereotypical traits of the minority character playing into his strengths as a boxer, which plays on the fears of a minority presence, the need for the white person to protect himself from invading forces outside of his or her control. In other words, it's like the filmmakers urge viewers to be afraid of the scary people of color.

He technically causes Mickey's death in "Rocky III."

What “Southpaw” does have working in its favor are the performances of Gyllenhaal and McAdams. The latter blends verve and tenderness into her fleeting minutes on screen while Gyllenhaal, who bulked up after losing all of the weight for role as Louis Bloom in “Nightcrawler,” lumbers and mumbles his way through the film as a borderline punch-drunk fighter fully cognizant of his aging body and diminishing skills. He doesn't have much to say, yet he remains surprisingly mesmerizing just through his shuffling and persistent disappointment.

Whatever heart “Southpaw” has is rooted in their performances. Unfortunately, all the right they do cannot overcome the miasma of clichéd crap that surrounds them for just a shade over two hours.

Review:  One and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer. 

Rating: R

Run time: 123 minutes

Genre: Drama

Ask Away

Target audience: Boxing fans and people who like Jake Gyllenhaal, Antoine Fuqua and “Sons of Anarchy.”

Take the whole family?: Some minor cursing pops up on occasion, and the non-boxing violence is a little bothersome. It's not an Antoine Fuqua film if someone doesn't get a gun to the head.

Theater or Netflix?: Don't blow the money on a trip to the movie theater, unless you want to watch one of the many other offerings still in theaters.

How awful is 50 Cent?:  My goodness is he an atrocious actor. The man has absolutely zero charisma on screen, which makes for a rather sizable problem given his role as a charismatic fight promoter in the vein of Don King. Every line he utters drags the film further and further into the abysmal abyss – it doesn't help that the filmmakers tossed him a few lines of exposition in key moments for reasons that shall forever remain a mystery – and it makes viewers wonder if the film's quality would improve with a better actor in that role. To use a Twitter insult, the dude should stick to Vitamin Water.

Watch this instead?: The “Rocky” series and “Raging Bull” remain the gold standard for pugilism flicks. Another less heralded but still interesting option is the “Great White Hype,” starring Samuel L. Jackson as a Don King proxy.

Just look at this outfit.