- Joined
- Mar 21, 2007
- Messages
- 12,362
- Reaction score
- 7,985
Girlfight (USA, 2000)
American sports drama written and directed by Karyn Kusama (her directorial debut) and stars Michelle Rodriquez in her first major film role.
Diana Guzman (Rodriquez) is a troubled, violent, high-school student in a poor area of Brooklyn. It is unclear exactly why Diana is so angry but a dead mom, dysfunctional family, and general poverty provide some plausible explanations. It is not illogical that she would want to punch people sometimes.
Diana's brother, Tiny, trains at a local boxing gym as the insistence of their domineering father. Tiny wants to be an artist and is a terrible boxer but he is given little choice in the matter. Diana decides to try the sport but is initially rebuffed because she is a girl. Some persistence and her willingness to pay for lessons (with money stolen from her dad) eventually get her a spot.
Diana shows some natural talent as a boxer and starts to become more serious about her training.
This is a boxing film but really it is more of a coming of age drama. Diana needs to overcome the confines of gender coded sports (the film is not subtle that Diana has to beg to box while her brother has to beg not to fight) and during this journey she starts to come to terms with her own behaviour, her crappy relationship with her dad, and experiences her first love.
Some of the boxing stuff is nonsensical and the film would have been better if had stuck to Diana competing in women's boxing.
The coming of age story is sometimes clumsy but it is also dramatic and occasionally touching. Rodriguez is solid in the lead role. She had the right physicality for the role and she demonstrates raw screen presence. I don't recall her ever doing anything interesting in the rest of her career but presumably she cleaned up financially from the Fast series. Good for her. Apparently she spent a lot of that on booze. Not so good for her.
This was a very promising debut for Kusama. She has since mostly worked on series but she did direct 4 more films and three of them (Jennifer's Body, The Invitation, Destroyer) are really interesting. (Let's just pretend that Aeon Flux never happened).
As an aside, the film dramatically overuses the movie thing where the actor stares at the ground and then looks up at the camera. This must happen a half dozen times in this film and it is an overused trope that I hate.
Rating: 5.5/10
American sports drama written and directed by Karyn Kusama (her directorial debut) and stars Michelle Rodriquez in her first major film role.
Diana Guzman (Rodriquez) is a troubled, violent, high-school student in a poor area of Brooklyn. It is unclear exactly why Diana is so angry but a dead mom, dysfunctional family, and general poverty provide some plausible explanations. It is not illogical that she would want to punch people sometimes.
Diana's brother, Tiny, trains at a local boxing gym as the insistence of their domineering father. Tiny wants to be an artist and is a terrible boxer but he is given little choice in the matter. Diana decides to try the sport but is initially rebuffed because she is a girl. Some persistence and her willingness to pay for lessons (with money stolen from her dad) eventually get her a spot.
Diana shows some natural talent as a boxer and starts to become more serious about her training.
This is a boxing film but really it is more of a coming of age drama. Diana needs to overcome the confines of gender coded sports (the film is not subtle that Diana has to beg to box while her brother has to beg not to fight) and during this journey she starts to come to terms with her own behaviour, her crappy relationship with her dad, and experiences her first love.
Some of the boxing stuff is nonsensical and the film would have been better if had stuck to Diana competing in women's boxing.
The coming of age story is sometimes clumsy but it is also dramatic and occasionally touching. Rodriguez is solid in the lead role. She had the right physicality for the role and she demonstrates raw screen presence. I don't recall her ever doing anything interesting in the rest of her career but presumably she cleaned up financially from the Fast series. Good for her. Apparently she spent a lot of that on booze. Not so good for her.
This was a very promising debut for Kusama. She has since mostly worked on series but she did direct 4 more films and three of them (Jennifer's Body, The Invitation, Destroyer) are really interesting. (Let's just pretend that Aeon Flux never happened).
As an aside, the film dramatically overuses the movie thing where the actor stares at the ground and then looks up at the camera. This must happen a half dozen times in this film and it is an overused trope that I hate.
Rating: 5.5/10