Southpaw Review

Kurt Sutter's script hits every mark you could predict from the poster: the champion at the top, the loss that strips him, the sober old trainer in a gym full of neighborhood kids, the custody hearing, the rematch. Maureen's death is the worst of it, a stray bullet at a charity gala staged so clumsily that grief never gets a foothold under it. What Antoine Fuqua has instead is Gyllenhaal, who rebuilt himself into a fighter who leads with his face, absorbing punishment because he cannot think of another plan, and the wrecked slurring diction he uses outside the ring is real character work.

Forest Whitaker underplays Tick Wills usefully. Oona Laurence gives Leila a hard, unsentimental anger that shames the writing around her. Mauro Fiore shoots the bouts from inside the pocket, close and wet, though the last fight cuts away to reaction shots so often that the strategy the trainer spent an hour teaching becomes impossible to follow. James Horner's final score leans on sentiment the images already carry. Rachel McAdams is very good for twenty minutes and then becomes a photograph on a wall.