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Girlfight
Rated R
Opens Friday, Sept. 29
Girlfight
won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival.
Writer-director
Karyn Kusama trained as a boxer, bringing her experience
in the ring to the set of Girlfight.
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When it comes to sports films, there is no greater genre
than the boxing flick. Boxing is easy to understand and
the mano a mano competition provides spectacle and
drama on the rawest and most basic of human levels.
The latest film to step into the ring of the boxing genre
is writer-director Karyn Kusama's debut feature Girlfight--a
film poised to take its place among great boxing films like
Raging Bull, On the Waterfront and the original Rocky.
Girlfight, like these other films, is more than a
simple boxing film. Tackling issues of gender, race and
domestic violence, the films uses pugilism as a backdrop
to tell its larger story.
The art of fisticuffs is far more complex than the popular
perception of two men entering a ring and beating the crap
out of each other until one falls down and doesn't get up.
Boxing is a microcosm of life in which the ring is a metaphor
for the real world and our boss or ex-lover or the bill
collector--or whoever is trying to kick our ass--is the
bruiser in the opposite corner.
Beneath the brutality of boxing is an intricate art and
exacting science that pits two fighters against each other.
Utilizing offense and defense simultaneously, it is the
most simple--yet most complex--form of competition. There
can be only one winner and one loser in boxing. But at the
same time, all the training, skill and power can be bested
with one lucky shot to the head. Calling boxing "one of
the purest sports," Kusama understands the true art of pugilism,
bringing to Girlfight an intimate knowledge that
generally eludes most people.
Michelle Rodriguez stars as Diana Guzman, a troubled teenager
living in Brooklyn with her younger brother (Ray Santiago)
and abusive father (Paul Calderon in an exquisite performance).
Diana's seemingly directionless life is punctuated by fights
with her classmates and frequent trips to the principal's
office. Then she discovers boxing. With the help of her
trainer (Jaime Tirelli), the art of pugilism transforms
the young girl, giving her an outlet for her anger, and
introducing her to Adrian (Santiago Douglas), a young man
who shares Diana's passion for boxing. An unlikely--yet
oddly believable--romance develops between the two, only
to be threatened when the young lovers must face each other
in an inter-gender amateur bout.
As the men in Diana Guzman's life, Douglas, Tirelli and
Calderon give multilayered performances that lend depth
and dimension to the film. But it's Rodriguez--making her
acting debut as Diana--who gives the heavyweight
performance of Girlfight. Rodriguez delivers the
same uncompromised humanity that Stallone brought to Rocky
(don't forget, Sly earned an Oscar nomination for his
performance as the Italian Stallion) and the charisma Travolta
radiated in Saturday Night Fever.
With an unconventionally strong lead character and an all-Latino
cast, Girlfight lays flat many of the stereotypes
of women and Hispanics that plague most movies. And like
a left hook to the temple, the film delivers a powerful
punch of raw spirit that defines independent cinema.
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