South­paw

Box­ing is all about sub­text. Any time two pro fight­ers step into the ring you can guar­an­tee their respec­tive camps, will­ing­ly aid­ed by the media, will have spun some nar­ra­tive or oth­er. Invari­ably there’ll be a point to prove or a per­son­al score to set­tle – a fight is nev­er just a fight. Yet by far the most com­pelling thing about this most pri­mal of sports is that the hype-stok­ing pub­lic spats and pay-per-view tout­ing trash talk ulti­mate­ly counts for noth­ing when the bell sounds. The beau­ty of box­ing is that the best man – or fight­er, if you want to get tech­ni­cal – always wins.

At least, that’s what the movies have taught us. Specif­i­cal­ly the kinds of movies that seek to ele­vate our sport­ing heroes (both real and fic­tion­al) to super­hu­man sta­tus by per­pet­u­at­ing the pop­u­lar belief that true great­ness is not mea­sured by one’s phys­i­cal attrib­ut­es but by the pres­ence of a deep­er-lying, infi­nite­ly more pow­er­ful strength that is less easy to quan­ti­fy yet at the same time unde­ni­able. It’s about hav­ing the guts, get­ting the glo­ry. It’s about hang­ing tough, stay­ing hun­gry and always ris­ing up to the chal­lenge of your rival. It’s the eye of the tiger.

In South­paw, we meet New York brawler Bil­ly Hope (Jake Gyl­len­haal) on top of the world. A sell-out title bout has just tak­en the undis­put­ed light heavy­weight champ’s record to 43 – 0, and as ever, his lov­ing wife and child­hood sweet­heart Mau­reen (Rachel McAdams) had a ring­side view. Only this time, something’s dif­fer­ent. For the first time in his career, Bil­ly doesn’t look like a cham­pi­on – his raw, seep­ing face telling the sto­ry of a con­test that was a lot clos­er than per­haps it should have been. Pain may come with the ter­ri­to­ry in this line of work, but in this instance it seems that Bil­ly went look­ing for pun­ish­ment. Insou­ciant­ly, he reminds Mau­reen that get­ting angry makes him a bet­ter fight­er; tear­ful­ly, she reminds him what he risks losing.

A trib­ute inked large across his left pec­toral mus­cle tells us that Bil­ly is a devot­ed father to young Leila (Oona Lau­rence). Oth­er tat­toos reveal more about his make-up: ​“Fear No Man” screams one shoul­der-width motif. Ear­ly on we’re told that Bil­ly, like Mau­reen, was a Hell’s Kitchen orphan – the prod­uct of a sys­tem he’s been fight­ing against his whole life. As one com­men­ta­tor points out dur­ing Billy’s suc­cess­ful title defence, he grew up just a few blocks and a mil­lion miles away from the show­time grandeur of Madi­son Square Gar­den. All he’s ever asked for is fair chance in a tough sport. Subtext.

With Billy’s back­sto­ry neat­ly unpacked, direc­tor Antoine Fuqua and screen­writer Kurt Sut­ter (who judg­ing by his IMDb pro­file pho­to is no stranger to a scuf­fle) waste no time in flip­ping the time-hon­oured rags-to-rich­es sports movie arc on its head, an unex­pect­ed fam­i­ly tragedy becom­ing the cat­a­lyst for an abrupt switch from ring to court­room. The result is under­whelm­ing to say the least, with Fuqua and Sut­ter inef­fec­tu­al­ly using every cliché in the book to keep us root­ing for Bil­ly. By the time his inevitable shot at redemp­tion arrives, we already know how it’s going to play out (i.e. exact­ly accord­ing to convention).

Too often the script mis­takes vio­lent out­bursts for actu­al dra­ma. This is blood, sweat and tears act­ing of the high­est order from Gyl­len­haal, but con­sid­er­ing the film is fun­da­men­tal­ly about a father try­ing to recon­nect with his daugh­ter, it’s frus­trat­ing how lit­tle oppor­tu­ni­ty he’s giv­en to flex his dra­mat­ic mus­cle. Fero­cious­ly upend­ing fur­ni­ture and snarling down the cam­era is all well and good, but Gyllenhaal’s com­mit­ted por­tray­al of the under­dog who doesn’t know when he’s beat­en – per­formed for long stretch­es through swollen eyes and blood­ied teeth – deserved a film­mak­er bold enough to try a few unortho­dox combinations.

But no, instead we get a stock train­ing mon­tage, lazy idiomat­ic riffs on our protagonist’s last name and an entourage of under­de­vel­oped sup­port­ing play­ers. (For­est Whitak­er is well cast as the small­time train­er who gives Bil­ly a sec­ond chance; Cur­tis ​“50 Cent” Jack­son less so as the mer­ce­nary pro­mot­er who proves there’s no such thing as loy­al­ty in box­ing as long as there’s cash mon­ey to be made.) Like a first-round knock­out, South­paw gets the job done, but it’s all just a bit anticlimactic.