Girlfight
is, in my opinion, among the more over-rated films of all time. What I expected
to be a well directed, acted and paced film is woefully none of the above. From
newcomer Michelle Rodriguez one note sullen glare performance, to the most dull
fight footage ever passed off in a feature film - this film offers none of the
magic that critics have hyped it to possess.
We
begin as Rodriguez is on the verge of being expelled for fighting. Living in a
Brooklyn ghetto and with a dead-end life, an alcoholic father, no mother and a
weak-willed brother. For some contrived reason she is required to go to the boxing
gym where her brother (Ray Santiago) trains and in so doing get the notion that
fighting (in the ring) might be the answer to her troubles at school.
I
will admit that Rodriquez has a few impressive dramatic moments, but please, please
trust me, there’s no other reason to go see this limp excuse for the female
Rocky - Roxie it’s not. Rodriguez is extremely convincing as a girl who can
box. I’m not questioning this, she will make you believe she’s capable
of stepping in the ring with boys. But the fight footage is so unbelievably inept
that it absolutely K.O.s any chance this film had to succeed.
Although
first-time writer and director Karyn Kusama spent 5 years preparing this project,
the script is significantly underdeveloped and the pace is so painfully lethargic
that I can’t imagine what she was doing during all those five years. Obviously
not studying footage of fighters in the ring.. Only in a dramatic confrontation
scene with her father, in which she tells him, "Everything I know about losing
I learned from you, Dad," does the movie have much emotional impact.
The
gym features lots of clichéd signs ("Champions are made not born."
"Winners never quit, and quitters never win."), even though the movie
wants badly to be taken as something more profound and pointed than just another
Rocky Balboa story. Nevertheless, the movie is one-idea story -- girl rather than
boy fighting her way out of squalor -- that never gets fleshed out beyond its
concept. Not only is it tedious and formulaic, but the build up to the climax,
the climax and the post-climax are just awful. The film is literally edited down
to nothing. And nothing is what I came away with.
