Requiem for a Middleweight: Southpaw, reviewed.
Chris Klimek
Like Robert De Niro and Daniel Day-Lewis before him, Jake Gyllenhaal transformed his body to play a boxer.
Those who're skeptical of the doctrine of self-mastery through sweat probably won't find much to hold their interest in Southpaw, a boxing melodrama so old-fashioned it's almost new. But I dug it. If my NPR review contains slightly fewer cliches than the movie does, it's not because I took a dive.