Director Antoine Fuqua shoots the boxing scenes in long takes and gives us full body shots that look painfully real. What a shame that it’s all in service of a plot that’s utterly predictable from start to finish. Melodramatic and manipulative, this is no Raging Bull.

Gyllenhaal too is curiously disappointing, more caught up in his own character, with its tattoos, its constantly puffed eye and its mumbled speaking, than in genuine contact with either the people around him or his audience. There are many scenes of Billy and his daughter Leila, but never do you sense the desperation he constantly professes to feel to get her back.