Gyllenhaal takes left turn with ‘Southpaw’

If you come to “Southpaw” for Jake Gyllenhaal’s stacked abdominals, get to your seat on time, as his finest flexing is in first 15 minutes; if you come for no-holds-barred melodrama, you can arrive at any juncture and be fully satisfied. Director Antoine Fuqua does not pull a single clichéd boxing film punch in this two-hour tour of Billy Hope’s exaltation, degradation and redemption.

Billy, you see, is a pugilist and family man, proud father to a girl with glasses and husband to fellow Hell’s Kitchen orphan Maureen (Rachel McAdams) whose impressive pair of ringside gladiator heels do not, as it turns out, convey immortality.

To answer some questions you might have about Fuqua’s boxing opera: Does the film have voiceover of Hope’s recently-deceased wife warning him of his doomed future as he destroys his boxing memorabilia? Yes! Does it feature a crusty old trainer with a glass eye who takes a broken Billy under his wing? Thanks for ticking that box Forest Whitaker! Does it have an estranged 10-year-old daughter spelling aloud for her father-that name again is Billy Hope-the word “hopelessness”? Oh, indeed.

With every plot detail preordained, you can focus on the details of Gyllenhaal’s elaborate stubble-Fuqua is to beard growth what Robert Bresson was to hands.

Even the professional elements of Hope’s story are groaningly implausible: no one with his masochistic fighting style would ever reach a 43-0 record, and no boxer with his popularity would ever find himself without a fight if he needed one. But it’s easier to film a bottomed out white guy jumping rope and listening to Eminem than to lens the real secret of boxing success: the sequences of DNA that result in Floyd Mayweather’s uncanny reflexes or Mike Tyson’s left hand uppercut.

Still, you sympathize with Gyllenhaal even the 50th time he screws up his ravaged, butterfly-bandaged face at the camera, feeling the deep pain of having ripped his body beyond recognition to earn an Oscar nod and then realizing that “Southpaw” is too bad to earn the title shot he really wants.

• • •

“Southpaw” is ?showing at the Sonoma 9 Cinemas. Rated R. Running time 2:03. Visit ?www.cinemawest.com.