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Knockout |
List Price: $24.99
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Reviews |
Features:
- Color
- Closed-captioned
- AC-3
Description:
Boxing movies have had a set of conventions that started in the 1930s and ran all the way up through the Rocky series and beyond. There's the hard-luck underdog contender, the talented boxer who's manipulated by crooked promoters and managers, the outside-the-ring love affair, the score to settle for a fellow boxer, the family tensions over the boxer's career and the climactic match against the big mean champion. Knockout manages to bring all of those ingredients to the table and mix them together. Maria Conchita Alonso plays the lovely and talented Belle, a young boxer with a future. Her dad is an ex-prizefighter himself, pursuing a career in law enforcement; his partner is Belle's love interest. Belle's mother died of a brain tumor some 15 years previous. When her friend, homegirl, and sparring partner is put in the hospital by the champion, Belle trains with a vengeance to take the title away and even the score for her friend's sake. This is a movie that tries very hard but is so riddled with the hoariest boxing cliches and trite dialogue that it can never rise above being heavy-handed and predictable. It's too bad, because the direction is competent and the performances are strong, but the by-the-numbers storyline breaks no new ground whatsoever. Granted, it's hard to rewrite the rules of the boxing movie, but Knockout's brand of prizefight melodrama veers from the formula only by featuring a Latino setting and female fighters. On the plus side, the fight scenes are well-choreographed and tough, but they have the weight of the rest of the movie working against them. Knockout isn't bad, but for even the most casual fan of boxing movies, you've seen it before. --Jerry Renshaw
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