03.02.04 – By Fiona Manning: In these turbulent times for boxing it would be nice to tell you there is at least one positive new movie out there about the sweet science.
Sorry to disappoint you. The latest cinematic black eye for boxing comes via the much-delayed, long-anticipated bio-pic Against The Ropes, due to be released here in the US on February 20.
Jackie Kallen, the “First Lady Of Boxing” who is the alleged subject of Against The Ropes, gets some rough studio treatment here. Where is a good ringside physician when you need one? Somewhere between “Action!” and “Cut!” Kallen has been severely short-changed by screenwriter Cheryl Edwards, who appears to have learned nothing from her extensive time with Kallen.
Edwards not only tramples all over Kallen’s personal history, but rewrites boxing history too.
Although official credits say the movie is “inspired by” Kallen’s fascinating life rather than “based on” the story of the woman who achieved boxing greatness, she is still called Jackie Kallen in the movie.
It would be nice if there was even a remote resemblance between the real and reel Kallen but there is very little in the way of that in this movie.
The studio marketing campaign says Kallen gave boxing the “one-two punch it never saw coming” but Kallen’s reputation takes a few haymakers and low blows too.
Kallen, the first female fight manager to take several fighters to world championships, is portrayed as being such an egomaniac she neglects her fighter responsibility in her all-out quest for personal glory.
Playing fast and very loose with the facts of Kallen’s real life, she is depicted as being single, childless and so incapable of seeing past her nose, she has to sell her fighter’s contract to secure him a world title fight.
Huh?
Kallen was the married mother of two in black-dominated Detroit, Michigan (mysteriously substituted for white-washed Cleveland, Ohio in the movie) when the real events occurred.
She also had a handful of fighters by the time she dragged convicted drug dealer James Toney off the streets and turned him into a boxing legend.
Let’s also not forget that Kallen was such a fixture in boxing she played a cameo as a Detroit corner girl in the 1983 boxing movie Tough Enough.
Kallen went mano a mano with the best of them. Once described by a writer as “Kitten With A Whip,” it was her motherly, but no-nonsense approach which helped her handle the talented, mercurial James Toney (substituted by a much-sweeter “Luther Shaw” in the movie).
In real life, Toney and Kallen’s tug-of-war culminated with him trying to kill her. In celluloid history, she is the villain.
As former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once pointed out, “As soon as there was trouble in Eden, Adam could not wait to lay blame at the feet of the woman.”
Glimpses of Kallen’s real story emerge in the rubble of truth: She really did tell her former boss she had to have “female surgery” the first time her fighter had a match out of town. Except, in real life, she worked on a newspaper, not the sports arena from the movie.
As boxing movies go, Against The Ropes gets some of it right, but every single fight scene winds up with the opponent kissing the canvas!
Since the studio obviously did not want to tangle with Toney, his name could have removed but the events kept historically accurate – and cinematically a lot more interesting.
Historically bizarre, Shaw/Toney defeats a Puerto Rican middleweight for the world championship – instead of the previously undefeated IBF middleweight champion Michael “Second To” Nunn in real life.
Not only that, but in the movie. Kallen and Shaw/Toney are no longer professionally a deux so she has to sneak in the security entrance of the fight arena to see the show!
Anyone who has ever attended a major boxing event knows how unlikely all of this is: she even manages to stalk across the arena sans credentials and even manages to climb into the ring and cross the canvas in the middle of his world championship fight to scream instructions at her ex fighter!
Another huh?
In real life – for those who are unaware of boxing rules – anyone not part of the fight corner who enters a ring during a fight would achieve immediate disqualification for a fighter.
Had she really done that in real life, I personally would have handed James Toney the gun he eventually terrorized Kallen with – but getting back to the facts: A real fight corner would go berserk.
The film corner acts grateful and the music swells – this being Hollywood. The message here being, let’s not let the facts get in the way of a generically-engineered movie.
Kallen and Toney did not run into any professional trouble until he lost his world title to Roy Jones Jr. after which he went berserk with that now infamous gun.
How much more interesting Against The Ropes would be if it showed Shaw/Toney’s real struggle with his teeth (remember those choppers??), his weight and his notorious, truly frightening out-of-the-ring temper.
The latter – only seen in one fleeting scene when he puts a smacking on his sparring partner – probably seemed in the writer’s mind to get in the way of the audience perhaps rooting for Shaw.
While the negative aspects of the movie are many, the merits are also many: mention must be made of Meg Ryan who captures Kallen’s fighting spirit and willingness to lay it all on the line to manage a fighter.
Ryan is seen to much better effect here than last year’s morose In The Cut.
She accurately pitches Kallen’s double-malt voice and Detroit accent (but to quote Roy Jones, “Y’all musta forgot” that the movie was relocated to Ohio).
Her outfits are more ho than boxing mama but Ryan is clearly eyeing her maximum Oscar chances here. She dumps her trademark smile for frequent, inexplicable teary-eyed moments. She’s thinking Erin Brokovich while this reviewer is thinking the real life Kallen would never get so upset over the small stuff.
Joe Cortese turns in an engaging performance as Kallen’s boss Irving Abel. His scenes with Kallen are among the movie’s best moments.
Director/actor Charles Dutton steals the show in the movie’s only real-feeling characterization as the grizzly ex-trainer Felix Reynolds, lured away from an exciting new career in customer service to train Kallen’s hot prospect.
Kerry Washington turns in a lovely performance as Kallen’s friend Renee and has the movie’s funniest line, “You called me because you wanted Blackup?” when Kallen first wades into Shaw’s ‘hood to look for another wayward fighter.
She, like Omar Epps who looks physically fine, but he turns in a troubling performance as Kallen’s raw Shaw.
His character is homogenized and sterilized to such an extent that he does not come across as a real fighter. He doesn’t even seem black half the time.
This is not helped by Epps being reduced to practically hissing at Kallen in the entire second half of the movie.
Juan Hernandez is much more convincing as the Puerto Rican champion whose title is on the line. His smack-talk and furious glare are on-target.
California’s first-rate trainer Shadeed Suluki trained Epps for the fight sequences so we can’t blame him for Epps not coming across convincingly.
Blame must be laid at the feet of the man, director Charles Dutton who should have spent a little more time in the boxing gym absorbing real color as opposed to draining the color out of this movie.
Boxing itself is shown in all its smarmy glory – and then some.
From attempts at sabotage to back-stabbing promoters and cigar-chomping boys who don’t particularly like their kittens to hold the whips, Against The Ropes regurgitates Hollywood’s musty, pre-World War 1 image of the ‘sport of villains’.
Sadly, Kallen’s good name and boxing’s tattered image are flung, not against the ropes, but firmly against the wall.
For questions or comments, email Fiona Manning at bondigirl@aol.com