Directed by Antoine Fuqua
Written by Kurt Sutter
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rachel McAdams, Oona Laurence, Forest Whitaker, 50 Cent, Naomie Harris, Beau Knapp
Soundtrack: James Horner (God rest him)
What a disappointing week.
First, the USMNT gets knocked out of the Gold Cup by Jamaica, and now I have to talk about this movie.
Let me say this first: if, for some reason, you have not seen the trailer for ‘Southpaw’, but still want to see it, do it; you have my blessing, but do not, not, not watch the trailer before paying to see it.
Because, for whatever reason, the people marketing this film decided to put all of us moviegoers in a Catch 22. They wanted to draw us in by capturing our attention with the trailer, but, unfortunately, seeing this movie after seeing the trailer is a largely futile, and, dare I say, boring experience. I hate using the word ‘boring’. I like to think my attention span is better than the vast majority of people out there, but ‘Southpaw’ forced my hand on this.
I hope I’m making myself clear here.
I desperately wanted to like this movie, I really did, and it almost, kind of, sort of won me over in the end, but not enough to recommend it; because right off the bat I spent more than 55% of the running time feeling my buttocks go numb, because no matter how hard the movie tried to grab me by the heartstrings, it just couldn’t, because I almost always knew what came next, because the trailer had already told me.
And it really is a waste, because, by and large, ‘Southpaw’ is well done. It’s competently shot, the performances are pretty good all around, and they did a great job of getting the real world of pay-per-view boxing (including HBO’s Jim Lampley and Roy Jones, Jr.) into the film, but there’s nothing special enough to transcend the predictability of the script. To be sure, it starts to get better in the second half, and eventually it did tug on my heartstrings, but it took way too long to get there, and for that reason I can’t recommend people seeing this theatrically if they’ve already seen the trailer.
The production values are certainly better than most direct-to-video garbage out there, but, unfortunately, ‘Southpaw’ is barely worth a rental.
Rating: ★★½ out of five
P.S.
Despite being a movie about a boxer, I would not call this a “sports movie”. It’s more of a straight drama that happens to be about an athlete. Just to be clear.