Release Date: February 20, 2004
Starring: Meg Ryan, Omar Epps, Charles S. Dutton, Tony Shalhoub, Timothy Daly
Directed by: Charles S. Dutton
Written by: Cheryl Edwards
Distributed by: Paramount Pictures
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (crude language, violence, brief sensuality, some drug material)
Against the Ropes is a boxing movie, and a Meg Ryan movie, which are two genres that have never gone together before and quite likely will never again. The boxing world is one of blood, sweat, tears, and brutish physical violence, and Ryan is its direct antithesis, a smart, spunky, bubble-gum blonde. She’s done her share of man’s movies, like Top Gun or Courage Under Fire, but on the screen she is not the same kind of kick-butt woman as, say, Angelina Jolie, which is probably why she seems so horribly miscast as real-life boxing promoter Jackie Kallen in Against the Ropes.
Kallen, too, is everything that Ryan is not, although the actress does her darnedest to squeeze into Kallen’s garish skintight miniskirts and revealing dresses and decaffeinates her delivery down to a nasally, worn-out, Midwestern slur. But where Julia Roberts could succeed in going against the grain of her image as Erin Brockovich, Ryan fails at this icon of female empowerment, looking as if she’d take the exit to the nearest When Sally Met Harry sequel if she could find it.
There is also the question of whether this movie, which is inspired by events in the life of Kallen, professional boxing’s most successful female promoter, should even be about her. In the film, she discovers (through a chain of extraordinary circumstances) a talented but unknown middleweight, Luther Shaw (Omar Epps), and hires a previously retired trainer, Felix Reynolds (Charles S. Dutton), to transform Shaw’s raw style and enthusiasm into championship material.
She does this on a virtual dare from a sleazeball of a promoter named Larocca (Tony Shalhoub, sneering through his dialogue like it’s going out of style, which, thanks to laughable performances like this, it never will), who is supposed to represent the male dominated boxing establishment in this sort of lowest-common-denominator filmmaking. But though Kallen has righteousness on her side -- anything you can do, I can do better, as that old saw from the battle of the sexes goes -- and the support of a local sports reporter and longtime friend Gaven Ross (Timothy Daly), it soon becomes apparent that Kallen is as much concerned about her own success as she is about Shaw’s.
Indeed, the film curiously minimizes Shaw just as Kallen does. If this weren’t ostensibly a movie about Kallen’s finest hour, anyone handed this script would immediately rewrite the film to focus on Shaw’s improbable rise to the top: here is an unranked boxer, fighting for his life in a world where he is completely out of his league, and contending for the middleweight championship. In the end, Against the Ropes is victim to the same problem that befell another 2004 sports movie, Miracle: both movies want to be about the people on the sidelines or behind the scenes, but in the end, it is the athlete on the field or in the ring who does the amazing thing. When the climactic showdown arrives (in this case a bout between Shaw and Larocca’s top fighter), the main character is rendered as much of a spectator as the audience.
Not that Kallen is much of a character to begin with. Ryan, whose raw talent has always been questionable, seems far more concerned with getting herself around Kallen’s distinct accent as opposed to starring in this movie. Luckily, both Epps and Dutton (who, in addition to acting, makes his directorial debut here) are far more magnetic. Epps, who is in fantastic shape, is like a horse chomping at the bit, and he does the boxer Shaw accordingly and convincingly. And Dutton is once again the tired old font of wisdom in a world of people with mixed-up priorities, essentially reprising his role as the Notre Dame groundskeeper Fortune from 1993’s Rudy.
As a director, Dutton is less reliable, and his movie is against the ropes for much of its running time. He choreographs the boxing scenes well and gives the viewer a clear idea of what’s going on in the ring, but the rest of the movie is standard, movie-of-the-week melodrama, including familiar genre sequences like the montage of training scenes, when everyone is so happy to be on the way up, and the melancholy mix of images when the characters peak and the money gets in the way of everything.
Presumably, anyone who sees Against the Ropes has either come for a boxing movie or a Meg Ryan movie. But Hollywood has ensured that there is no shortage of either, and in fact almost all of them are better, a comparison that this movie only serves to make more favorable.
-- Craig Roush (craigroush@hotmail.com)