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" Chances are if you ask Jake Gyllenhaal if he&amp;#039;s actively trying to get himself an Oscar, he&amp;#039;d say &amp;quot;No.&amp;quot; Not just because it&amp;#039;s uncouth for actors to admit they want Oscars, but also because he&amp;#039;s type to consider craft its own reward.\u00A0But nobody would fault you for asking, given that over the last five years,\u00A0Gyllenhaal has delivered one career-best performance after another.\u00A0 With movies like End of Watch, Prisoners, Enemy, Nightcrawler, and\u00A0now Southpaw,\u00A0Gyllenhaal has been on a much-publicized streak with a career trajectory that, as Grantland describes it, is &amp;quot;notable for the degree to which it seems motivated solely by his evident pleasure in doing whatever the hell he wants, regardless of the medium or the size of the project.&amp;quot; What&amp;#039;s become clear is that Gyllenhaal wants to act with a capital A. The results have led to him quickly rising to\u00A0the caliber of actor about whom you\u00A0say things like &amp;quot;When will they win an Oscar?&amp;quot;\u00A0 Southpaw illustrates just why that question has become easier to ask. The film focuses on Billy Hope, a professional boxer who loses his Floyd Mayweather-like career, wealth, and family and has to Rocky his way to getting it all back. The film is anchored by another great Gyllenhaal role, one that&amp;#039;s marked by what has distinguished his performance and talents: his ability to transform into his roles. Much\u00A0may be made of his bodily transformations\u2014malnourished creepazoid in Nightcrawler, chiseled Adonis in Southpaw\u2014but they don&amp;#039;t compare to his transformations into his characters. Especially in Southpaw. His portrayal of Hope isn&amp;#039;t so much an actor possessing a character, as it is a\u00A0wholesale forging one into being. Hope\u00A0is shaped and defined by Gyllenhaal.\u00A0That shapeshifting allows him to convey a remarkably natural inhabitance of the role. So natural, in fact, that not only does\u00A0Gyllenhaal\u00A0disappear into it, sometimes even the seams of the performance disappear along with him.\u00A0It&amp;#039;s happened in End of Watch, it&amp;#039;s happened in Enemy, and it&amp;#039;s happened in Nightcrawler. One moment Jake Gyllenhaal is there. Then he&amp;#039;s gone.\u00A0  That inhabitation lends a lot to the otherwise cliche-heavy\u00A0Southpaw. Naturally, it\u00A0makes those ferocious boxing bits you&amp;#039;ve seen in the trailers more believable. But most of all, Gyllenhaal is most effective in the moments of hurt and anguish he displays as Billy Hope mourns, regrets, and reforms. Pathos and poignancy surge as performance fades, because you&amp;#039;re drawn to his character and the natural authenticity he lends it. His characters\u2014good and, often, not so good\u2014are recognizably human, and none more so than Billy Hope when life kicks him down.\u00A0 It&amp;#039;s that humanity, and his continued ability to render it through characters,\u00A0that is the reason why Southpaw provides somewhat of a possible answer to the question &amp;quot;When will he win an Oscar?&amp;quot; That answer is &amp;quot;Maybe soon.&amp;quot; Producer Harvey Weinstein is determined to make Gyllenhaal his prize contender this year, and media\u00A0will no doubt be eager to start pushing the actor&amp;#039;s name forward for golden statues. What&amp;#039;s more,\u00A0his role\u00A0offers many of the elements Academy voters love: a bodily transformation, a redemption story, a natural performance in an emotionally manipulative melodrama, and an actor hitting the peak of an unexpected career shift. We can be assured that\u00A0Academy-friendly, because that&amp;#039;s exactly what earned Matthew McConaughey his statue for Dallas Buyers Club. Gyllenhaal&amp;#039;s career swerve isn&amp;#039;t unlike the McConnaissance. And like the drawling Texan, he&amp;#039;s delivered consistently good performances in films that weren&amp;#039;t widely seen, but still compounded into media attention, and led to a groundswell of support and momentum that made way for an\u00A0Oscar-friendly package like Dallas Buyers Club.\u00A0That the Academy then rewarded. It&amp;#039;s fully possible Oscar will find it easy to bestow upon Gyllenhaal what it did for McConaughey, because, hey, it&amp;#039;s in the playbook. Then again, the Academy is notorious for their oversights and misjudgments. (Gyllenhaal\u00A0was considered snubbed because he wasn&amp;#039;t nominated for\u00A0Nightcrawler,\u00A0though that\u00A0may help his chances this time.)\u00A0Just because Gyllenhaal walks like a McConaughey, doesn&amp;#039;t mean he&amp;#039;ll walk the Oscar stage like one. The actor may find himself instead consigned to the chorus of&amp;quot;When will they win an Oscar?&amp;quot; questions that haunt actors of his disposition, like Leonardo DiCaprio, Joaquin Phoenix, and Amy Adams,\u00A0who have amassed a collective 13\u00A0nominations, but no win. But there&amp;#039;s certainly worse company to be in. The very fact that he can be so easily compared to those distinguished actors indicates how quietly and quickly he has now become one of our greatest, most interesting actors. And while one can&amp;#039;t help but want to see Gyllenhaal&amp;#039;s work in Southpaw rewarded as a prize for his greatest feat of shapeshifting\u2014into a Grade A thespian\u2014if he doesn&amp;#039;t win for his current movie, or any movie for that matter, we can&amp;#039;t say he hasn&amp;#039;t delivered what Rene Russo&amp;#039;s character in Nightcrawler asks of Gyllenhaal&amp;#039;s: &amp;quot;I want something people can&amp;#039;t turn away from.&amp;quot; Jake Gyllenhaal has continued to ensure every new film he makes is something we can&amp;#039;t turn away from, and that is its own reward. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a36696/jake-gyllenhaal-oscar/>