Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rachel McAdams, Forest Whitaker, Oona Laurence, 50 Cent, Naomie Harris, Victor Ortiz, Tyrese Gibson, Miguel Gomez, Beau Knapp, Rita Ora, Clare Foley, Dominic Colón, Jose Caraballo, Malcolm M. Mays, Aaron Quattrocchi, Lana Young, Danny Henriquez, Patsy Meck, Vito Grassi, Tony Weeks, Jimmy Lennon Jr., Charles Hoyes, Clare Foley, Mark Shrader, Adam Kroloff, Skylan Brooks, Patrick Jordan, Cedric D. Jones, Jim Lampley.

If not for Jake Gyllenhaal’s almost surreal but almost unmatched ability to morph between roles and put on the type of performance associated with the very best of them, Southpaw might well have had the appeal of a four in the morning film that is only being played in an insomniac’s house because no-one will hire them to do a 24 hour job.

However, the late delving into the arms of the obscure television channel, not even loved by advertisers and the nerdish obsessive sometime heralds the finding of a film that lifts itself up beyond the confines of its own natural inability to be adored and offers the chance to take in a performance that rivals the late James Cagney in Angels With Dirty Faces or Jack Nicholson in Batman; sometimes even if the film is considered to be erring on the side of despair, an actor’s worth will shine through.

So it is with the promise that surrounds Southpaw, a film for the boxing fan that looks at the fall out of a champion who has lost everything and in which redemption is sought. It’s not like it hasn’t been done before…

That’s the problem with a film that sets itself out to hold a beacon of respectability, the clichés come out because they work, not because they are tired and the writer doesn’t have the ability to make something out of formulaic, it is because the words and actions, even in an average film, work up to a point.

Where the best thing in Southpaw is the painstaking approach to showing Jake Gyllenhaal as the boxer Billy Hope and the cinematography that goes along such sporting endeavours, the rest of the film, the rest of the acting talent that breathes alongside it, leaves far too much to be desired. Not even the appearance of the fantastic Forest Whitaker as his reluctant coach can stir the emotions and a tear from a glass eye; and his is one of the more believable roles in the film.

Too many avenues of dialogue are opened up only become disused or forgotten about and the cliché express that came hurtling into town with the local lad came good angle and man done wrong pained expression, is shoved further off the platform by some of the more ridiculous moments in which would make an afternoon confessional programme where handbags and insults are traded over look like an Oscar award winning film directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

In a film where the choreography is the clear winner by a technical knockout in the first minute of round one, the old chestnuts firmly roasted and given far too much room for the leftover to be scattered all over the floor, disappointment is the new champion.

Unadventurous, brutal and a film with a big glass chin, Southpaw doesn’t have the fight in it to be a true cinematic legend.

Ian D. Hall