I don’t want to besmirch boxing movies in general, or, I dunno, maybe I do … boxing remains the easiest metaphor in all of moviedom. A man enters a ring along; he has a literal fight which always reflects his metaphorical fight outside the ring and he is defined by the experience. i.e. something that never happens in real life. For 90 minutes I was hoping this didn’t apply to Southpaw. I thought with all the other stuff going on, Antoine Fuqua was just going to let the boxing speak for itself.
And then I reflected. Remind me not to do that. So, dammit, that’s exactly what Antoine Fuqua did. Billy Hope (Jake Gyllenhaal) has three fights in Southpaw. They’re all metaphorical and he is clearly defined and re-defined by each one of them. Rrrrrrr.
Directors of boxing movies, why not just let him live in the ring?
Ok, now that I got that out of the way, Southpaw is actually a pretty good film. Billy Hope is a Rocky kind-of boxer (another type that doesn’t exist in real life) – he takes a lot of punishment in the ring; he doesn’t seem happy if his left eyeball hasn’t been dislodged at some point. He wins a fight ugly in the opening scenes and his wife Maureen (Rachel McAdams) doesn’t mince words afterwards in private – there aren’t a whole lot of beatings left in his career. Billy is as incredulous as we are, “Geez, honey, I won tonight. Gimme a break.” Maureen is smarter than Billy and he knows it; what he doesn’t quite know is how dependent he’s become on her leadership.
As the light heavyweight champ (and, my, does Jake get ripped to look the part), Billy gets to pick and choose his opponents, and so Rocky III breaks out in a hotel lobby where nemesis Miguel ‘Magic’ Escobar (Miguel Gomez) accuses Billy of ducking him; ugliness ensues. Starting with the accidental shooting of his wife in the melee that follows, Billy’s life gets real bad, real fast. Enough so that his clown 
car entourage (50 Cent & co.) abandon him – for Miguel, no less–, leaving him broke, destitute and alone. They did not physically transport him to a ditch, but that’s kind of implied. Billy’s daughter (Oona Laurence) also is forcibly taken by social services until Billy can put his life back together.
So … in an eight week span, he loses his wife, his title, his respect, his dignity, his money, his home, his livelihood, his posse, and his daughter. It’s not hard to see the appeal of this film – Billy seems like a decent guy and we want to see him get his daughter back. But he can only do it with the help of an old school gym rat guru Burgess Meredith, er, that’s Forest Whitaker.
The boxing scenes didn’t do it for me here; like Rocky, Billy takes too much abuse in the ring for this tale to be taken seriously. I was far more interested in how he turns his life around and how he approaches the boxing game with an entirely new support cast. In 123 minutes of movie, it will be roughly minute 115 before this title becomes relevant. Billy is a straight righty through all three matches. And even then, it seems a stretch. But the comeback is worth it; everybody loves an underdog, and yet what we love even more is the guy who isn’t an underdog and wouldn’t even be treading among underdog kennels if he hadn’t treated his life like a dogcrap receptacle.
Champion Billy’s armor has a chink
Spousal dependence in his weak link
On his own, there’s pain
At odds with his brain
Sometimes you gotta box outside of the think
Rated R, 123 Minutes
D: Antoine Fuqua
W: Kurt Sutter
Genre: Taking a beating, physically and metaphorically
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Boxers
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Dandies
