Gyllenhaal punches way above ‘Southpaw’s’ weight class — VIDEOS
Jake Gyllenhaal is tremendous in the boxing tale "Southpaw."
The movie? Not so much.
It's the best performance I've seen in a bad movie since Julianne Moore won an Oscar for "Still Alice."
Gyllenhaal stars as undefeated light heavyweight champ Billy "The Great" Hope, who shares a sprawling mansion with his beautiful wife (Rachel McAdams) and loving daughter (Oona Laurence) until one mistake costs him everything.
He eventually pulls himself up and makes his way to a no-frills boxing gym, where he finds work cleaning up at night and gains a trainer in former fighter Tick Wills (Forest Whitaker). From there, "Southpaw" is a testament to the therapeutic power of changing light bulbs and punching the crap out of things.
It all culminates in a fight in Las Vegas in a giant, nonexistent Caesars Palace arena. (But as nonexistent Caesars Palace arenas go, it's way more realistic than the enormous, CGI boxing amphitheater that showed up in "2012.")
The result is an entertaining display of movie boxing, where the fighters stand toe-to-toe and just wail on each other mercilessly until one of them falls.
But the rest of "Southpaw," written by "Sons of Anarchy's" Kurt Sutter and directed by Antoine Fuqua, is a bunch of melodramatic hooey that would feel more at home in the grittiest entry ever in the Hallmark Hall of Fame.
Gyllenhaal, though, who got absolutely jacked for the role, bores down deep into the mumbling, not-particularly-likable rage monster. It's a terrific performance, completely different than his creepy sociopath in last fall's "Nightcrawler." And it's further proof that he's becoming one of his generation's most interesting actors.
It's just a shame that he's punching way above the movie's weight class.
Here's a look at some of Gyllenhaal's training process, as well as a look at his next movie, "Everest," which opens in Imax theaters Sept. 18 and everywhere else Sept. 25.
