I have come to believe that it is rather difficult to make an uninteresting or non-compelling boxing movie.  At the center are two men (or women) in primal form, knocking the snot out of each other, often in slow motion and Sweat-O-Vision.  And if the peripheral situation and characters are at all skillful, the filmmakers are sure to succeed.  A perfect example of this is Southpaw.

Antoine Fuqua’s dark, moody melange is as formulaic as things can get.  A hot shot fighter (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a proven winner, but then loses everything when tragedy strikes (because he cannot control his temper).  He hits rock bottom before setting out to reclaim his dignity, and by doing so, gets a redemptive shot at the title again.

The reason it all works is because Fuqua and his cast are committed to the story.  As Billy Pope (Gyllenhaal) hits rock bottom we can smell and taste his failure; the gulf that grows between himself and his distraught daughter Laila (Oona Laurence) is very believable.  The relationship between Hope and trainer Tick Wells (Forest Whitaker) is beautifully enacted.  And the boxing scenes are very convincing, even while they don’t pack the punch we’ve seen in the Rocky films or other recent slugfests.

With outstanding performances in films like this one and last year’s Nightcrawler, Jake Gyllenhaal is doing what Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson were doing in the 1970s; he’s a star creating exquisite character portraits.  And Forest Whitaker is even better as the trainer; I’m hoping he is contention for a Supporting Actor nomination. Their work, along with that of Rachel McAdams, is what makes this movie work.

Fuqua directs with a bit too much style: lots of closeups, lots of shots where people are not wholly within the frame, lots of ambient lighting.  It’s filmed as if Billy Hope doesn’t live in the same world with everybody else; after his fall he resides in dark and seamy places reflective of his own soul.  It’s a bit much.  I also didn’t care for the too-quick resolution of his legal status to fight, and then the brevity of the title fight itself.  But the power of the images remain, and there is no disputing that films like this — especially when driven by superb actors — deliver dramatic thrills even when their premises are hackneyed.  ☆ ☆ ☆.  28 July 2015.