Southpaw (7.5/10)

Jake Gyllenhaal has become one of the most exciting actors to see today. He's a chameleon. You couldn't recognise him in Nightcrawler, you couldn't recognise him here in Southpaw. The way he change his face, his posture, his mannerisms; he is just a joy to watch.

And Rachel McAdams was right up there with him. She had to make the audience feel for her in those few scenes in order to achieve that impact later on. As for Oona Laurence, here's another child actor giving a super impressive performance that's fierce and emotional. She made me tear up.

Forest Whitaker as usual came with eyes blazing. His presence always filled up the screen and he too gave a great emotional performance at one point that only great actors like him could. Probably the weakest link here would be 50 Cent but only because he was going up against the greats. But what he did was enough.

Director Antoine Fuqua really brought out the performances in his actors, but the film as a whole wasn't up to par unfortunately. The pacing in the middle was significantly slower. But you cannot argue that he didn't set up scenes properly. I just felt that the story could have moved a little faster though.

And once we got to the final fight, it was entertaining and exciting, but it wasn't mesmerizing. Especially that final blow, it did nothing for me. I wanted more.

There was that one money shot, when Gyllenhaal was seated in his corner and Fuqua shot from the floor and slowly went in and went higher, and Gyllenhaal's expression said it all - kind of summed up all the emotion and the story that came before. Brilliant.

The trailers did spoil a lot of the plots in the movie. I didn't need to see that McAdams' character becoming the pivot for the story. The trailers could have worked around that.

As for the score of by the late James Horner, I sadly do not remember it because I thought the most memorable music came from Eminem. It overpowered the score by Horner to a point where I didn't even took note of it.

But as a whole though, I thought the movie worked. I don't know why the reviews were so bad. It deserved a better score from critics.