All boxing films come down to three storylines, or all three wrapped in one—get beaten, get angry, get back to the top. Eighty years have passed since Wallace Beery made The Champ and Southpaw doesn’t try to rewrite the formula. It’s not a surprise, Barton Fink broke himself that way.
According to its synopsis on IMDB, the Polish documentary Down But Not Out (2015) focuses on four women stepping into the boxing ring for their first match ever. If I hadn’t looked it up, it would have taken me a few moments to figure it out on my own, as the movie doesn’t explicitly mention it. As a matter of fact, the movie doesn’t really tell the audience anything – no talking-head reflections or interviews, no narrator to hold your hand, and the only title cards are the ones that tell you what round it is in a fight. Down But Not Out is a documentary in the truest sense; it is merely a recording of events as they happened over the course of 24 hours. It’s closer to a home movie or security camera footage than Michael Moore as far as the documentary spectrum goes. It doesn’t seek to tell, it only shows.