{"id":4366,"date":"2015-04-13T01:48:51","date_gmt":"2015-04-13T01:48:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/?p=4366"},"modified":"2015-04-13T01:48:51","modified_gmt":"2015-04-13T01:48:51","slug":"trailer-ricochet-southpaw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/stage-combat-2\/trailer-ricochet-southpaw\/","title":{"rendered":"Trailer Ricochet: Southpaw"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Another long-awaited post about upcoming movies that I think will have great combat. Today, we\u2019ll look at the trailer for the upcoming film <strong>Southpaw<\/strong> and compare it to other films in the genre to generate reasonable expectations for its fight choreography and performance.<\/p>\n<p>I try to look at the pedigree of the filmmakers to give myself a fair expectation, instead of relying on just an exciting trailer. We all know that the preview often does not match the final product.<\/p>\n<h2>Southpaw<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Southpaw Official Trailer #1 (2015) - Jake Gyllenhaal, Rachel McAdams Movie HD\" width=\"620\" height=\"349\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Mh2ebPxhoLs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>In Their Corner<\/h2>\n<p>We have to start with Jake Gyllenhaal, who is practically unrecognizable in the poster, playing another mentally unhinged and socially ostracized protagonist. His career spans roles in <strong>Donnie Darko, Jarhead, Zodiac, Source Code, Enemy<\/strong> leading up to last year\u2019s <strong>Nightcrawler<\/strong>. He\u2019s great at it, and I find him fascinating to watch, but this is not new territory to him. His physical transformation for Southpaw is garnering attention, just like those of Christian Bale.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of Christian Bale, one of the writers of Southpaw is Richard Wenk who wrote the <strong>Mechanic (2011)<\/strong>, but that\u2019s not <strong>The Machinist (2004)<\/strong> in which Bale dropped to 110 lbs, so never mind. Let\u2019s refocus on Kurt Sutter who was the show runner for <strong>Sons of Anarchy (2008-2014)<\/strong>. That means he has the \u201ccreated by\u201d credit and wrote the majority of the episodes. When it comes to Shakespearean levels of violence, Sutter is your writer.<\/p>\n<p>The director is Antoine Fuqua, known for his work in the film <strong>Training Day<\/strong> (Oscar winner) as well as <strong>The Replacement Killers<\/strong> (impressive gun-fu film), <strong>Tears of the Sun<\/strong> (mediocre war film), <strong>King Arthur<\/strong> (remember Keira Knightley\u2019s archery), <strong>Shooter<\/strong> (decent Mark Wahlberg vehicle), <strong>Brooklyn\u2019s Finest<\/strong> (what?), <strong>Olympus Has Fallen<\/strong> (with Gerard Butler; the one with Channing Tatum was White House Down) and <strong>The Equalizer<\/strong>. There are some hits and misses there. Perhaps the important thing to note is that they all have well-shot action scenes, and this is his second collaboration with Wenk.<\/p>\n<p>The trailer makes the story look a little formulaic: beautiful and supportive wife killed and daughter taken away, the fighter who once retired is now back to redeem himself, despite risk to his own life. It\u2019s <strong>Commando<\/strong> with fewer guns. It\u2019s <strong>Gladiator<\/strong> with fewer swords. It\u2019s the <a href=\"http:\/\/tvtropes.org\/pmwiki\/pmwiki.php\/Main\/CrusadingWidower\">Crusading Widower<\/a> (try not to spend the rest of the day on <a href=\"http:\/\/tvtropes.org\/\">TVtropes.org<\/a> like I did).<\/p>\n<h2>Action Score<\/h2>\n<p>Boxing. One of my favourite films with boxing is <strong>Snatch (2000)<\/strong>, and I use it in stage combat classes to show the effect of editing to show the feel of a fight, rather than a blow-by-blow. Other boxing movies to compare include the classic <strong>Raging Bull<\/strong> and the <strong>Rocky<\/strong> series.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=YiVOwxsa4OM<\/p>\n<h2>What\u2019s the Lesson?<\/h2>\n<p>We can hope that the fight scenes will be as beautiful as Snatch and Raging Bull, and that the performances will be moving. With a great writing team, we can hope that the script will deliver something out of the ordinary\u2026 but the thing I see most is white guys redeeming their downfall by beating up black guys.<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, I\u2019m putting my endorsement behind <strong>The Fighter (2010)<\/strong>, so we can give Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale some good fights, and a chance to knock out other white guys to redeem their brain damage from this brutal sport. Another great choice is the depression-era <strong>Cinderella Man (2005)<\/strong> with Russell Crowe, directed by Ron Howard. Paul Giamatti won several awards and nominations for his supporting role.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NyfbsUpRQ8o<\/p>\n<h2>Great Summer Ahead<\/h2>\n<p>Let\u2019s not ignore the other great action movies that will be released this summer. I\u2019m also including movies that might be mediocre productions, but may have amazing fight scenes.<\/p>\n<p>As a stage combat instructor, I&#8217;m not a huge fan of car chases and other stunts, so I&#8217;d normally avoid <strong>The Fast &amp; The Furious<\/strong>, but the latest in the F&amp;F franchise looks to have some fun fights. I usually ignore the gun-toting action movies, but I\u2019m making an exception for <strong>Hitman<\/strong> which I think will have more hand-to-hand than the next Mission Impossible instalment.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Skpu5HaVkOc\">Furious 7<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=cdLl1GVjOrc\">Mad Max: Fury Road<\/a> <\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GzlZEhO3QuM\">Avengers: Age of Ultron<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hi4fObmAImA\">Terminator: Genisys<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=CUMPFcdd0Sk\">Hitman: Agent 47<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another long-awaited post about upcoming movies that I think will have great combat. Today, we\u2019ll look at the trailer for the upcoming film Southpaw and compare it to other films in the genre to generate reasonable expectations for its fight choreography and performance. I try to look at the pedigree of the filmmakers to give [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4370,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stage-combat-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blog-southpaw.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4366"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4366"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4369,"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4366\/revisions\/4369"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}