Southpaw

The narrative structure is a bit inconsistent, as after a strangely rushed and overstuffed first half, the story basically "starts from scratch". Anyway, with the arrival of Forest Whitaker on the scene, Southpaw spills into its better half. It's not necessarily his acting (he's playing his standard), rather that he has an extremely audience-rewarding "mentor" role here. Perhaps the only thing worth mentioning from the first half of the film is the opening fight, which is beautifully and evocatively shot. Everything else in the first hour felt too superficial and overwrought. The second half is a lot more believable and elevates the final impression to slightly above average. (24/03/2019)

Southpaw is a movie that certainly doesn't brim with originality. You've seen the story many times in various forms, which is a typical pitfall of most sports movies. But when you get over classic cliches like "The more you get hit, the harder you fight.", etc., you are in for a pretty solid experience. Especially the fights are filmed very well, Gyllenhaal is his usual (above)standard self, and the movie goes by really fast. All in all, I was satisfied in the end. (05/01/2016)

I simply enjoy boxing movies and I feel that it's difficult to make one that is truly bad. This one is not great, but it has great locations and you can see that Fuqua knows how to shoot a great scene, not only action-packed but also sporty. Some shots from the ring are just fantastic, even though in the emotional aspect, it's somewhat one-dimensional. (10/09/2015)

Jake Gyllenhaal was the reason why I watched this movie, but I was a bit worried about the director. Antoine Fuqua makes technically sound movies. So, the action sequences usually work out well. But it’s worse when it comes to emotions, dialogues and all other scenes that contain no action. In other words, most of the movie. Antione fails terribly at that and I actually thought I wasn’t going to be able to finish the movie and that I was going to go to bed instead. I haven’t seen such a boring and worthless movie for a long time. There are plenty of boxing dramas and I think every single one of them was better than Southpaw. (15/09/2015)

Why does everybody give Southpaw three stars? Because it’s fine in terms of craftsmanship, it has quite a few emotionally tense moments, the ring scenes are very naturalistic thanks to the contact camerawork, and the two outstanding actors, Jake Gyllenhaal and Forest Whitaker, wring their talents to the last drop of sweat and blood. But why only three stars? Because nothing happens that we wouldn’t have expected in advance today (the only seemingly surprising twist is revealed in the distributor's blurb). After all, "fine in terms of craftsmanship" today is any project with such budget and cast, and then if we were to put this film’s level of emotion on some imaginary ring facing Warrior, the mentally unstable champion Billy Hope, his cliché-ridden sporting and moral reboot, and the routine Uncle Fugua would all walk away ignominiously defeated by a painful knockout. Good ol’ three stars… ;) (16/09/2015)