The boxing movie is the ultimate temptation for screen actors keen to prove their macho mettle. Playing a pugilist can be faked, but if you want to look really convincing, you have to pump up – and, if things are done authentically, you can never be sure that your pretty face won’t be irreversibly modified in the process. The main draw of Antoine Fuqua’s Southpaw is the metamorphosis undergone by Jake Gyllenhaal, who spent five months in training to transform himself into a lumbering, mumbling slab of battered meatloaf.
Gyllenhaal is as intense as you might expect playing champion bruiser Billy Hope, who has it all, loses it all, then hits that much-slogged Hollywood highway Redemption Road. Despite some ferociously Scorsese-esque effects in the showdowns that bookend the film, Southpaw is closer to Rocky than to Raging Bull, with the script (by Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter) warming up a stew of cliches: the orphanage upbringing, the devoted wife (Rachel McAdams), the ascetic guru trainer (Forest Whitaker), the young daughter Billy must win back… It’s like a 1930s ring melodrama tarted up with lifestyle bling and hyper-professional whoomph, but it’s essentially bantamweight.
