From acclaimed director Antoine Fuqua and starring Academy Award nominated Jake Gyllenhaal comes a story of tragedy, loss and the painful road to redemption.
He's become a real glutton for punishment has Jake Gyllenhaal; whether it's the pounds he dropped for Nightcrawler, the muscle he packed on for this, or the cold he endured to play Scott Fischer in the forthcoming Everest.
Here, as light heavyweight world champ Billy Hope, Gyllenhaal sure puts inthe hard yards on screen and before - his physical transformation into a lean mean fighting machine has already become the movie's best poster.
What a pity then, the movie itself is on a high-cheese, high-corn diet, much of it reconstituted from many better boxing movies.
Southpaw has the odd feel of being a bling-era remake of a much older film - or maybe that's just because Hope's missus (played by Rachel McAdams) is surely the first character in a Hollywood movie to be called "Maureen" since last century.
Rachel McAdams and Jake Gyllenhaal in a scene from Southpaw.
Both grew up in orphanages in New York's Hell's Kitchen where it seems he skipped elocution class but found his calling as a boxer while she became the perfect wife and mother.
Directed by the usually gritty Fuqua and scripted by Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter, Southpaw was originally mooted as a vehicle for Eminem, who instead is pumping up the soundtrack. The central daddy-daughter relationship between Hope and Leila (Oona Laurence) has echoes of the rapper's much essayed family troubles.
But instead we get Gyllenhaal, whose Hope starts out as the champ who has it all, only to lose just about all of it in the wake of a family tragedy.
He's something to watch both in the ring and out. You feel like he's done the rounds before and after the cuts in the close-up fight scenes.
And he sure bleeds convincingly.
But the sappiness gets the better of the movie as do the ringside commentators whose job is to deliver heavy on the exposition - one actually says one fight has "a subtext of hatred and revenge" to remind those of us at the back who weren't paying attention.
Jake Gyllenhaal in a scene from the movie Southpaw.
The film does play better once Hope departs the clutches of promoter played by Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson and connects to Forest Whitaker's wise old neighbourhood gym owner who reworks his previously suicidal technique with some wise advice: "Stopping punches with your face is not defence."
And it's hard not to root for the guy as he steps into the ring for the inevitable big showdown with that aforementioned subtext. If you know your boxing movies this isn't a new Raging Bull, nor a Rocky, but more an update on The Champ.
