Director Antoine Fuqua
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rachel McAdams, Oona Laurence
Rated MA
Score 5/6

Boxer Billy Hope turns to trainer Tick Willis to help him get his life back on track after losing his wife in a tragic accident and his daughter to child protection services.

Okay, it’s been awhile since I went to the friendly neighbourhood cinema to watch this one. The only excuse I can offer for the reason of the gap is the ancient art of procrastination, which I know is not a very good excuse.
Now with that out of the way I can finally get down to writing the review. A word of advice it might not be a good idea to go and see this one if your too depressed because it goes to a dark place very quickly (it should be noted that Southpaw was the feature film written by Kurt Sutter, who is best known for his work on TV series The Shield and Sons of Anarchy) also I should point out that if you go into this one expecting the boxing matches to be shot in a similar way to the Rocky movies you might be a little disappointed. In the interviews that I saw for Southpaw the filmmakers made a point of shooting these sequences in similar fashion you would expect to see on a boxing pay-per-view. Antoine Fuqua delivered a very watchable, though what I have seen of his work this is a slight departure from what you would usually expect from one of his movies.
As expected Jake Gyllenhaal gave a great performance most notably, when his character hit absolute rock bottom when dealing with the death of his wife. But he really should be congratulated for the physical transformation that he went through to get ready for his role. I was also impressed by Oona Laurence’s performance and even more impressed by the length of her filmography, at 13 she clearly is somebody to keep an eye on.