The minute the film introduces Billy Hope (Gyllenhaal), the current light heavyweight champion and most dominant boxer of his generation, you can tell exactly how the film's rise-fall-rise storyline is going to play out. Billy's wife Maureen (Rachel McAdams), who was the love of his life since they met in an orphanage when they were 13, is accidentally shot and killed during a scuffle with his rival (Miguel Gomez from FX's The Strain) and his entourage at a charity event. Devastated by the loss of Maureen, Billy grieves with booze and drugs, which leads to him losing custody of his daughter (Oona Laurence) and the mansion he worked so hard to attain. After being forced back into the humble lifestyle of his youth, Billy decides to sober up and get back in the ring. Thanks to the positive influence from his new hard-but-compassionate trainer (Forest Whitaker), Billy gets his daughter back and goes on to get a shot to face his nemesis for a shot at the heavyweight title he held before his downfall.
While Southpaw never gets boring and has a handful of legitimately emotional scenes, it's about as basic and predictable as a film can be. The script by Kurt Sutter-who was the mastermind behind FX's Shakespearean biker drama Sons of Anarchy- is a non-stop onslaught of cheesy family melodrama and sports redemption story cliches. It's hard to completely avoid cliches while telling a story like this, but Sutter doesn't even attempt to deviate from this well-worn formula. The conventional nature of Sutter's script is especially disappointing since he did such a brilliant job of exploring husband/wife and parent/child relationships throughout Sons of Anarchy's seven-season run. If the central relationships in Southpaw had the depth and vast emotional weight of the ones Sutter put on television for 13 weeks every fall from 2008 to 2014, it would've been much easier to digest the film's overly simplistic story.
What saves Southpaw from being a completely mediocre affair is the acting ensemble. Whitaker gives his finest performance in ages as the trainer that helps Billy get his life back on track and Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson brings the perfect amount of sleaze and charisma to his part as the predictably shady fight promoter that manages Billy's finances. While Southpaw boasts a strong supporting cast, there's no question that this film belongs to Gyllenhaal. Even when the writing fails him (which it does for about 90% of the film's duration), Gyllenhaal remains an unpredictable force of nature. Billy Hope could've easily been a one-note character, but Gyllenhaal make him an empathic character with the ferocity and serious raw emotional power he brings to the role. Gyllenhaal has been on fire since 2011's Source Code and continues to make his case as one of the greatest actors of his generation with each subsequent role. Southpaw offers up nothing new or noteworthy in terms of storytelling, but the opportunity to see a brilliant actor at the top of his game makes it worthwhile.
3/5 Stars
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