BOXING is Hollywood’s favourite sport. Baseball and basketball may be contenders, but it is boxing that has the violence, the theatricality and the winner-takes-all simplicity which underpin so much of American cinema—hence its central place in films from “Body and Soul” and “Raging Bull” to such recent award-winners as “Million Dollar Baby” and “The Fighter”.
How, then, can a new boxing drama do anything that hasn’t been done countless times before? “Southpaw”, directed by Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day”) and written by Kurt Sutter (creator of “Sons of Anarchy”), appears to have solved this problem by starting where its predecessors finish. Its hero, Billy Hope (Jake Gyllenhaal), is already a world champion at the start of the film. He is married to his childhood sweetheart (Rachel McAdams), and they live with their daughter in a mansion bigger than most Loire chateaux. The intriguing question is whether Billy will retire while he is still relatively compos mentis, or whether he will sign the $30m contract which his manager (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson) is waving under his broken...
from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1VAnhW6
No comments:
Post a Comment