Meg Ryan plays a Jewish woman from Detroit who strives to become a successful boxing manager despite facing many obstacles, including an unscrupulous boxing promoter, played by Tony Shalhoub. Against the Ropes looks at the relationship between Kallen and her first professional boxer, played by Omar Epps.

Against the Ropes is your typical Lifetime movie of the week feature that somehow made it to theaters. It had nice intentions but the film is not very good or strong. The story is very uninspired and it reminded me of Erin Brockovich. Against the Ropes tried too hard to be like Erin Brockovich and other boxing films without really being its own film. Also, most of the film is pretty dull and there are no real good performances. Meg Ryan is okay as Jackie Kallen. She was a little weak in the dramatic scenes and sometimes her emotions felt really fake. Her outfits were really trashy and this took away from her already less than stellar performance.

Meg Ryan is paired up with Omar Epps and he gives a decent performance. However, his chemistry with Meg is really weak. This hurts the film a lot since the whole movie was basically their relationship. Tony Shalhoub gives an okay performance but there really wasn't a lot for his character to do. Charles S. Dutton gives an okay performance as Felix. Again, there really wasn't much for his character to do. Dutton also directs the film and he does an okay job. He could have developed the characters a little more and he could have done a better job at capturing the relationship between Jackie and Luther. The film is very predictable and very simple. The boxing scenes are good but they pale in comparison to other boxing films like Rocky. In the end, this really is a weak film that's not worth watching. Rating 4/10

Jackie Kallen (Meg Ryan) grew up in the boxing gym. She's working for fight promoter Irving Abel (Joe Cortese) in Cleveland. Manager Sam LaRocca (Tony Shalhoub) has a big title fight. The sexist Sam ridicules Jackie. After the fight, he dismisses her and sells her the contract of the loser. She and secretary Renee (Kerry Washington) visit her fighter only to find him doing drugs and getting beaten by criminal Luther Shaw (Omar Epps). Jackie signs Luther to a contract and recruits trainer Felix Reynolds (Charles S. Dutton). Gavin Reese (Tim Daly) is a sports TV personality.

This is a fictionalization of the real female pioneer, boxing manager Jackie Kallen. The writing is filled with clichés and old boxing formulas. I'm not really put off by it but there isn't anything new in this. I do like Meg Ryan and Omar Epps' connection. They are able to fill the standard characters with solid emotions. Otherwise, I would have liked to see more of the real story in this real person's journey.

Charles S. Dutton does a movie ... and he has done a lot of them in front of the camera to know how things work I'd say. But judging by the end product, I can only assume that a lot of people got involved and told him what they thought would work best for the movie. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

The movie starts off quite good - we get a woman in the boxing/promotion world and you can see that the odds are stacked against her. We do root for her and there are many really good things happening the first half of the movie ... even then some may feel that certain people are just there to further the agenda of white folks ... I might be overthinking it, but that is how it feels.

And when the ending comes or much of the second half, really made me cringe. Not just because of how Meg Ryans characters evolves (rather devolves) ... but how things are resolved ... which includes her being involved in the fight we've been waiting for and a riddle only she seems to be able to solve ... and no I will not absolve the movie for what it does there ... maybe you think you can resolve and ... accept it for what it is ... at least knowing Dutton was the director makes me understand why in certain scenes he left it to other actors to shine ... which could be the reason certain things dissolve ... enough of those though.

There was more here ... and the promise the beginning made ... I wish it had more of that towards the end.