New Southpaw Movie Received Mixed Reviews From Major Critics
The Weinstein Company released their new drama film, “Southpaw,” into theaters this weekend, and the top, major movie critics have turned in their reviews. It turns out that the movie got a pretty mixed bag with an overall 57 score out of a possible 100 across 41 reviews at Metacritic.com site.
The film stars: 50 Cent, Forest Whitaker, Jake Gyllenhaal, Oona Laurence and Rachel McAdams. We’ve added blurbs from a few of the critics,below.
Mick LaSalle at the San Francisco Chronicle, gave it a really nice 100 score, stating: “The experience of Southpaw is rather like seeing the truth behind the cliches, revived in all their pain and power to surprise.”
Richard Roeper from the Chicago Sun-Times, gave it an 88 score, saying: “While Southpaw will surprise almost no one who has seen a fair amount of boxing movies, Fuqua’s direction and the excellent performances keep the action humming.”
Alonso Duralde over at TheWrap, gave it a 77 grade, saying: ” Southpaw is so simultaneously entertaining and unsurprising that it could go straight to ESPN Classic, but if these are the extremes it takes for certain people to notice that, hey, that guy from “Bubble Boy” has turned into a heck of an actor, then so be it.”
Brian Truitt from USA Today, gave it a 75 grade. He stated: “While Southpaw doesn’t do anything innovative with the punch-drunk formula — there’s even a rousing final match, leaving you exhausted by the end — Gyllenhaal and Whitaker are real heavyweights who give the feature a winning combo.”
Brian Tallerico from RogerEbert.com, gave it a 75 score, stating: “Southpaw enters the long filmography of boxing flicks, and puts up a surprisingly good fight.”
Deborah Young from The Hollywood Reporter, gave it a 70 score, saying: “Southpaw sticks to tried-and-tested genre rules, yet an edgy cast — led by formidable leading man Jake Gyllenhaal — keeps the story in sharp focus.”
Ty Burr over at the Boston Globe, gave it a 63 score, stating: “This is a genre with especially sturdy bones, and when Southpaw connects, which is more often than you might expect, you feel it down to your toes.”
Michael Phillips from the Chicago Tribune, gave it a 63 grade. He stated: “Does it succeed? Sort of. It helps if you don’t mind your boxing movies made up of massive granite chunks of previous boxing movies.”
Peter Travers over at Rolling Stone, gave it a 63 grade, stating: “Amazingly, Gyllenhaal never cheats on his character’s sense of dignity. Against the odds, he keeps you in Billy’s corner. That’s a champ.”
Kenneth Turan from the Los Angeles Times, gave it a 60 score, stating: ” Southpaw is so logic-defying it takes on a Frankenstein life of its own, especially with as energetic and focused an action maestro as Fuqua (“Training Day,” “The Equalizer”) in charge.”
Joe Morgenstern over at the Wall Street Journal, gave it a 60 score. He stated: “It’s a win for Mr. Gyllenhaal, while the movie loses out to its clichés.”
A.O. Scott from The New York Times, gave it a 60 grade. He said: “The plotting is somehow both flat-footed and operatic in its absurdity. Character arcs are tangled, flattened and foreshortened. Common sense is knocked silly. But Mr. Fuqua has never been a director to let ridiculousness get in the way of visceral action.”
Chris Nashawaty from Entertainment Weekly, gave it a 58 grade, stating:”Gyllenhaal’s Southpaw performance is great, but for reasons unrelated to his physique. He’s thrilling to watch and the only unpredictable thing in a two-hours-plus movie where you can count on one hand the number of moments that aren’t hand-me-downs from better boxing films like “Rocky,” “Raging Bull,” and “Fat City.”
Justin Chang over at Variety, gave it a 50 grade, saying: “The undeniable intensity of Gyllenhaal’s bulked-up, Method-mumbling performance may leave you feeling more pummeled than convinced in this heavy-handed tale of redemption, in which director Antoine Fuqua once more demonstrates his fascination with codes of masculine aggression, extreme violence and not much else.”
Joe Neumaier from the New York Daily News, gave it a 40 grade. He stated: “When boxing cliches work, they can deliver a knockout. When they don’t, as in Southpaw, we get just punch-drunk.”
Kyle Smith from the New York Post, gave it a 38 score. He stated: “The finest 1947 boxing picture of 2015 is here: Southpaw, a film that’s gruntingly insistent on its clichés.”
Finally, Ann Hornaday from the Washington Post, gave it a 37 score. She stated: “Southpaw may be rote, predictable and mawkish, but none of those faults lie in its star. Even when he looks like an unholy mess, he transcends the movie he’s in.” Stay tuned. Also, get your favorite Movie stuff, and more by Clicking Here.
