Boxing film Southpaw sees Jake Gyllenhaal, Antoine Fuqua fighting fit

Realism in the ring helps make Southpaw an exceptional boxing film.

Director Antoine Fuqua on the set of film Southpaw

Director Antoine Fuqua is ticking off a bucket list of “male” films with some elan. His cop movie Training Day won an Academy Award for Denzel Washington; he is currently shooting a new take on the western The Magnificent Seven, with Washington, Ethan Hawke, Chris Pratt and others; and this week, his boxing movie Southpaw arrives in Australian cinemas.

Deep down, it’s every man’s dream to direct a boxing film.

“I would say so,” he says, laughing. “I know it’s been mine!”

For how long?

“Since I’ve been making movies,” the 49-year-old says. “You kind of grow up watching them even before you know you’re going to be a filmmaker. They’re such interesting character studies. It’s built-in drama.”

There are so many good boxing films, including one of the greatest films of all time, Raging Bull, a couple of Oscar winners — Rocky and Million Dollar Baby — and then the documentaries, including When We Were Kings. Fuqua concedes the notion of stepping into the ring with the likes of Raging Bull, Rocky and Cinderella Man was nerve-racking.

“It really is intimidating,” Fuqua says, before noting the father-daughter narrative in Southpaw helped to pull him in.

FILM REVIEW: Read Stephen Romei’s verdict on Southpaw

“For me what I thought was really important was the [paternal] story; Hope [the film’s main character] loses custody of his daughter after his career stumbles,” he says.

Southpaw is a muscular melodrama, as might be expected from Fuqua, the director of King Arthur, Shooter and Olympus has Fallen. Its standout performer is Jake Gyllenhaal, who overwhelms any genre cliches with a typecast-defying performance as Billy Hope, the kid who grew up in an orphanage to become the blingy, undefeated light-heavyweight champion.

Hope’s boxing style is a variation on the “rope-a-dope” method Muhammad Ali used to tire opponents, with Hope absorbing an almighty load of punishment before unleashing his Hulk-like violence.

The beatings are the film’s asset. Many boxing films gild the lily with their quick cuts and tight framing. It is apparent Gyllenhaal — or Hope — gets hit. Hard.

The authenticity of the fights is the area in which Fuqua, a former amateur boxer (he grew up in Pittsburgh, attending the local children’s Golden Gloves program, and he still trains), felt he could add something to the genre.

“I fought myself, so I knew from certain fight scenes in certain movies I could do better than that — you know what I mean? — because I understand it much better intimately. But there’s some amazing boxing films.”

That realism is something of a relief after the unrealistic violence in his most recent film, The Equalizer.

“So you see people actually getting punched in the face and the camera’s not always cutting away or shying away from the blood and sweat that always happens,” he says.

Fuqua says he wanted to relay the notion of what it feels like to be sitting in the corner of the ring between rounds and struggling to breathe, and then to immerse the audience in the tightness, pain and brutality of the ring.

“My goal was to make it as authentic as possible — to make you feel like you’re watching a fight the whole way through,” he says.

He manages this effect by treating it as a real fight, or at least as close to reality as he could get while protecting the actors.

Gyllenhaal trained for five months, “living as a fighter” with 5am sessions and training, to the point of “really knowing what it feels like to get hit and to gut it out”.

And he shot the boxing ring scenes as actual fights, across 12 three-minute rounds.

“I made him go through the real process of a fight, obviously without the full brutality,” Fuqua says. “You had real boxers in there so they would stick him a little bit and pull punches every once in a while, but if they saw he was getting a little lazy and they saw a window, they would pop him a little. So Jake took some hits and he threw a few back. That’s as close as you can get in a movie.”

Visually, Fuqua brought in help from HBO, the leading boxing broadcaster in the US, which set up a number of cameras, as it would for genuine televised bouts.

Fuqua added his own cameras for tighter shots, with some people playing photographers in the fight scenes actually shooting the action with Canon 5-D cameras. As fights progressed, the director changed the focus from the more familiar outside-the-ring TV shots to tighter, more bruising close-ups.

The process of putting the actors through the 12-round choreography of a real fight also added to the buzz and authenticity on set, particularly for the extras playing the crowd.

“When you put a bunch of people in an arena and there’s two people in a ring with gloves on, there’s a sense of violence in the air,” Fuqua notes. Anyone who has been to a big fight would likely agree.

Few would have foreseen Gyllenhaal as a prize-fighter, though, particularly the raging, slurring animal he becomes in this film. The slight star of Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain and Nightcrawler had bulked up for previous films Jarhead and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, but for Southpaw he became ripped, a vision of sinew and muscle.

After his recent performance in Nightcrawler, which was unlucky not to receive greater award recognition, Gyllenhaal’s Hope is further evidence of his range.

Fuqua recalls meeting the actor five or six years ago and telling him he “should do more authentic films and he should do a little more masculine-type films”.

“Because Jake has a nice size to him,” Fuqua adds. “He’s about six foot [183cm], he’s got nice shoulders, he’s an athlete, he’s a runner and there’s a fire in Jake’s eyes.”

He also began his screen life young, as an 11-year-old, and people who grow up in the business often have something to prove, Fuqua says.

The director realised the actor was no longer “little Jake”, as some in the business used to refer to him.

“I could see he hated the fact they saw him as ‘little Jake’. I think there was a fire and an anger in him,” Fuqua says.

“He’s a serious actor. This is a movie where I saw an opportunity for him to do that.”

Gyllenhaal has a solid cast around him, including Rachel McAdams as Billy’s wife, Forest Whitaker as his trainer and rapper 50 Cent (Curtis Jackson) as his manager.

There is also an early tragic twist in the screenplay by Kurt Sutter (Sons of Anarchy). Yet in a film that wheels out some genre cliches, it is a pleasant narrative surprise.

Fuqua likes surprises. It sets a tone, he says, “that anything could happen”.

Southpaw is open nationally.