This movie, about a high-school senior in the projects who learns to box as a means of self-empowerment, is made only slightly less cliched by the fact that said senior is a girl. Diana (Michelle Rodriguez) needs some serious work on her anger-management skills and takes up boxing alongside her reluctant, frail brother, despite the objections of various sexist authority figures. I will say that learning to punch someone in the face seems a lot more empowering -- if equally useless in society -- as spelling "woman" w-o-m-y-n. And it's always nice to see a strong female role model who doesn't let even a doe-eyed, pillow-lipped hunk (named Adrian, in what is evidently a gender-switching homage to Rocky) change her mind.
(First, I have to mention that my personal hero, John Sayles, makes a cameo appearance in the film as a science teacher. And I also want to point out that first-time director Karyn Kusama uses some great boxer's-eye view shots of punches being thrown, which conveyed more effectively the sense of boxing than Raging Bull's slo-mo, black-and-white scenes.)
Diana is a tough yet sympathetic character -- I loved her for beating the crap out of a slutty, makeup-coated bitch, and for just plain hating another too-pretty woman. Adrian, her brother, and her father are all interesting enough on the face of things, but that's really all we get to see -- the face (well, okay, so we see Adrian's fabulous biceps, too, but you get my point). Thinking back on the movie, I don't see how boxing really had such a huge effect on her life, except maybe for giving her a legitimate forum in which to pound people. She ends the movie strong, self-confident, and independent -- which is how she starts it. You get the impression that she'd take care of herself just fine no matter what she chose to do, which is an excellent and admirable character trait, but doesn't make for a very compelling story. I suspect there's some message about overcoming adversity, but you know she's going to succeed at whatever she does, not only because of story-telling conventions, but because she's that type of tough, determined woman. I just wish she'd had a better movie built around her.
Still, you could do worse than this movie -- Diana is certainly worth spending time with. If you know any chauvinists, definitely take them to this movie (or Love and Basketball, which I preferred mainly because I love basketball). I think Stephen ought to take his stepfather, Cletus. See, Stephen and his mother and Cletus and I went to dinner last weekend, and at some point on the ride home, somebody mentioned Janet Reno, and Cletus's comment on her was, "She's an old maid, isn't she?" Said, I should note, without a trace of irony or humor. Stephen's mother made some comment about how well Reno has dealt with her Parkinson's disease, to which Cletus replied, "That's got nothing to do with her being an old maid." I thought I was going to explode from the sheer pressure of keeping my feelings to myself and not wanting to embarrass Stephen.
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