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On The Ropes

1999, Movie, NR, 94 mins

On The Ropes: Review

ON THE ROPES
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The harsh lives of three aspiring boxers who train at NYC's Bed-Stuy Boxing Center are woven together in this powerful documentary by Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgan. The movie's calm center is middle-aged trainer Harry Keitt, a long-time resident of the notoriously tough and poverty-stricken Brooklyn neighborhood called Bedford-Stuyvesant. An ex-con and reformed drug addict, Keitt was himself a promising boxer in the late '70s and early '80s, having once worked as Mohammed Ali's sparring partner. Among Keitt's current proteges are the young boxers whose ups and downs Burstein and Morgan chronicle: Tyrene Manson, Noel Santiago and George Walton. Manson is trying to protect her teenage cousins from the streets and their drug-addicted, drug-dealing, AIDS-infected father; a disciplined, optimistic amateur, she's thrown a devastating curve when her uncle's house is raided and she's accused of selling drugs. Insecure, deceptively cocky welterweight Santiago is clearly in need of the steady support he gets from Keitt — his mother is a recovered crack addict, and his childhood was disordered and impoverished on every level — but his self-doubt repeatedly sabotages his progress both in and out of the ring. Walton, a successful amateur heavyweight, is poised for a professional career, but his loyalty to Keitt is sorely tested by slick new trainers and managers who promise to take him to the top and pressure him to abandon his old cronies. The film is often technically rough, but it's painfully compelling: No fiction writer could throw more obstacles in the paths of his or her characters, and few would subject such basically sympathetic individuals to such messy, sadly inconclusive ends. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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