Southpaw is the latest movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal, he plays Billy “The Great” Hope. He’s a successful junior middleweight boxing champion with everything. A beautiful wife, Maureen played by Rachel McAdams, and a daughter, Laila played by Oona Laurence, and a nice house. He just wants to just continue to fight and defend his championship. He has a antagonist who wants to fight for the championship, Ramone played by Victor Ortiz, but his wife doesn’t want Billy to fight him.She wants him to take some time off from boxing and take a break. This all comes to a head when the three of them were at a fundraising dinner and they get into an argument and Billy’s wife, Maureen,gets shot. This starts Billy down the road that is not so good because he ends up losing his house, losing his title. He rushes into a contract with his manager, played by Jordan Mains played by 50 Cent, and he is not thinking about training he was thinking about all his problems and the loss of his wife. Billy goes down a path of violence and self destruction.This leads him to lose his daughter to child services. He just wants to see his daughter again because that’s all he has.Naomie Harris plays Angela Rivera the child services counselor. She helps Billy get to see his daughter again by doing the things he needs to do. He gets a job at a local gym. He ends up going to a gym where he meets a man by the name of Tigg Wells played by Forest Whitaker. Wells doesn’t want to train Billy, but Billy convinces him that he is his only hope and that he was the only trainer that ever had a boxer that beats him even though it was a draw. Billy goes through the whole process of training and getting back on track to try to be the opponent where the other guy Ramone is the champ now. He beat the guy that beat Billy. The movie climax is a big fight scene. This fight is a fight of redemption for Billy and it will help him get some of his credibility back some of his greatness back from when he was a junior middleweight boxing champion.
I give I give Southpaw a big See-it based on the great performance by Jake Gyllenhaal he gives the performance of the year in my opinion. This is one of the best performances you’ll see this year or any other year for that matter.The brutality of the fights, just the down and dirty kind of way they film this movie. The training and all that stuff that goes into a boxing movie. Antoine Fuqua does it again. I think that this is one of his, if not his best movie to date after Training day and End of Watch. He captures the down and dirty aspects of a boxing movie in the gym in the fighting in the blood. Southpaws is up there with some of the greatest boxing movies ever Raging Bull, Rocky, Cinderella Man the Hurricane. They all capture what it is to be a boxer and what’s the lifestyle of a boxer is like. I think this movie does it just as well if not better than the others. This is my review of Southpaw From the Fourth Row.
Dan skip Allen
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