Southpaw (2015) on Netflix
Billy Hope holds the light heavyweight title, with his wife Maureen and daughter Leila beside him. A taunt from a younger boxer at an orphanage fundraiser turns into a brawl.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.3/10282,478 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes60%
Trailer
Plot summary
Billy Hope, known as the Great, rules the light heavyweight division with a record of 42 wins and no losses. In a title defense at Madison Square Garden against Darius Jones, his face is cut badly and he bleeds from his eye, which frightens Maureen, his wife. He wins by knockout and keeps the belt. A younger fighter, Miguel "Magic" Escobar, then challenges him in front of the press. Maureen presses Billy to retire, and she turns down the two-year deal for three more fights that his manager, Jordan Mains, offers. At a fundraiser for the orphanage where the couple met, Billy gives a speech of thanks, and Miguel, who is in the room, goads him about Maureen and the titles. The two men brawl, and a gunshot rings out.
Cast
- Jose Caraballoas Eli Frost
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Southpaw (2015)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Southpaw began as a film for Eminem in the role of Billy Hope. Screenwriter Kurt Sutter, who had spent seven years meeting the rapper's producing partners in search of a project together, drew the story from Eminem's own personal struggles.
- Eminem left the project in December 2012 to go back to music, saying he considered himself a musician first and an actor second. Antoine Fuqua signed on to direct in March 2014, and Jake Gyllenhaal took over the role.
- James Horner wrote the score for nothing. Deeply moved by the story and convinced by the film-makers' vision, he agreed to compose it free of charge despite the film's limited budget.
- Southpaw carries James Horner's final score. He recorded it after The 33, even though Southpaw reached cinemas first, and he was killed in a plane crash on 22 June 2015, a month before the film opened.
- The Frank Ocean song heard in the closing act, Wiseman, had never been released. Ocean wrote it for Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, but Tarantino left it out rather than cheapen the effort by adding it without a proper place in the film.
- Southpaw was the first American film that Wanda Pictures, the film arm of Wang Jianlin's Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group, ever invested in.
- The story was first meant to unfold in Detroit, but the production settled on Pittsburgh instead, and the Pennsylvania city stood in for New York City on screen.
