Against the Ropes
Rating: One and a half stars
Starring: Meg Ryan, Omar Epps, Tony Shalhoub, Tim Daly, Charles S. Dutton. Written by Cheryl Edwards. Directed by Dutton. Rated PG-13 for crude language, violence, brief sensuality and some drug material.

By AUSTIN O’CONNOR
Sun Staff
If bad movies were punches, Against the Ropes would land like a perfectly timed round-house haymaker, rendering its audience dazed, confused and, worst of all, really, really bored.
The movie, based on a true story, stars Meg Ryan as Jackie Kallen, a fetching blonde who, according to the press notes, is the most successful female manager in boxing history.
How does one measure a female’s success as a boxing manager, you ask? Well, in this movie it seems to have something to do with the length of her skirt, since Jackie’s keep getting shorter and shorter as she ascends the boxing hierarchy, or at least the part of the boxing hierarchy that exists in Cleveland, where the story takes place.
I have heard some very good things about Cleveland and its surrounding areas, but no one has ever called it a beautiful city. As captured by the lens of actor-turned-first-time director Charles S. Dutton (Rudy, TV’s Roc), it appears to offer an only slightly more comfortable living environment than does Baghdad.
Still, Cleveland would probably be a perfectly suitable setting for a better movie. But you could set Against the Ropes in the most photogenic city on Earth, and you’d still need to rouse the audience with smelling salts every few scenes.
In an opening flashback, young Jackie watches ringside as her boxing manager dad puts one of his pugilists through the paces. When she tries to help out, she’s told by her remarkably unencouraging dad that, in so many words, there’s no place for anyone with breasts in the boxing game. Apparently, pop never envisioned the sight of George Foreman bouncing back into the ring at age 50, much less the current wave of female boxers featured on many fight night cards these days.
Cut three decades forward to present day, where Jackie is toiling as an underappreciated assistant to the director of a Cleveland arena that serves as a hotbed for the city’s boxing scene. Jackie’s job is to get the men their coffee and endure abuse from people like LaRocca, a mobbed-up fight kingpin played by Tony Shalhoub.
As a character actor, Shalhoub is normally as dependable as a Mike Tyson meltdown, but his performance here represents an uncharacteristic mistake. He spits out his dialogue and stares determinedly, trying to muster up something that approaches intimidation. But it just doesn’t work. Shalhoub does comedy as well as anyone, but he’s terribly miscast as the heavy.
The movie’s main plot kicks in when Jackie challenges LaRocca’s management of his boxers, and he calls her on it by handing one of his fighters over to her. The fighter turns out to be a crack addict, but on a visit to his apartment, Kallen discovers a prodigy: Luther Shaw (Omar Epps), an angry young man whose skill in a street brawl impresses her so much she convinces him to give it a go in the ring, under her tutelage.
From there, the movie turns into a nonsensical brew of Erin Brockovich, Jerry Maguire, The Karate Kid and, of course, Rocky. Kallen and her Mr. Miyagi-esque trainer Felix (Dutton) mold Luther into “Lethal” Luther Shaw, title contender, and the bumpy road inevitably leads back to a big fight showdown with one of LaRocca’s fighters.
The movie is reportedly based on Kallen’s experience with James “Lights Out” Toney, whom she discovered in obscurity in Detroit and lifted to the cruiserweight world title. And her life certainly seems interesting enough to be told on screen.
But Dutton’s movie never flows, a dilemma that may not be entirely his fault. The film has been languishing on the shelf for well over a year, and it plays as if lots of people have taken their shot at splicing and dicing it. As released, the movie feels more like a string of tenuously connected scenes than a complete story.
As for Ryan, she follows Kurt Russell’s lead in Miracle, throwing on a nasally Midwestern accent to play an inspirational sports hero. She also cavorts around in outfits that most streetwalkers would deem too risque. It seems clear that she’d like to break free from her romantic comedy cage, but she should probably start being a bit choosier with her projects.
Against the Ropes, it must be said, is a better movie than her last one, the singularly awful thriller In the Cut. But that’s like saying Clay Aiken is a better boxer than Richard Simmons. You wouldn’t really want to watch either one, if you could avoid it.
Austin O’Connor’s e-mail address is aoconnor@lowellsun.com.