Michelle Rodriguez in Girlfight (Karyn Kusama, 2000)
Cast: Michelle Rodriguez, Jamie Tirelli, Paul Calderon, Douglas Santiago, Ray Santiago, Victor Sierra, Elisa Bocanegra, Shannon Walker Williams. Screenplay: Karyn Kusama. Cinematography: Patrick Cady. Production design: Stephen Beatrice. Film editing: Plummy Tucker. Music: Gene McDaniels, Theodore Shapiro.
An attractive cast and intelligent camerawork and editing help make Girlfight watchable even for someone who dislikes boxing and finds sport movies boringly predictable. And yes, Girlfight is predictable. The protagonist is Diana Guzman (Michelle Rodriguez), who lives in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood with her father, Sandro (Paul Calderon), and brother, Tiny (Ray Santiago). Sandro is a macho bully whom Diana suspects of abusing her mother, who committed suicide. He takes little interest in her, putting his hopes on Tiny, whom he forces to train as a boxer, even though Tiny really wants to be an artist. After getting in trouble for fighting at school, Diana thinks that she might want to try to learn to box, too, so she persuades her brother's coach, Hector (Jamie Tirelli), to coach her. When she turns out to be good at it, Hector sets her up with a sparring partner, a guy named Adrian (Douglas Santiago), who wants to be a professional boxer. And of course Diana and Adrian fall in love, which presents a problem when through a series of plot contrivances they find themselves fighting each other in an important amateur competition. With the help of solid performances, writer-director Karyn Kusama makes all of this more interesting than it sounds in summary. That she named a character Adrian and has someone comment that it's usually a girl's name shows that she knows her sports movies and doesn't mind the comparisons.
