source: Girlfight

Trailer—Girlfight

Girlfight

Went to Wal-Mart and found this film on DVD and had no idea whether I made a bad purchase or a good one. It is the later outcome to my viewing the entire film from beginning to end. Michelle Rodriquez,(Diana Guzman),"BloodRayne",'05, gave a great performance and her looks are beautiful, sexy, and at the same time a real study in the art of how acting is really performed. Diana did not like her home life and especially her own father for the abuse he gave her mother. She decides to get boxing training in a local Brooklyn Gym and is not really well accepted by the male boxers. In her high school there is plenty of friction between her female classmates and guys. There is lots of action in the ladies bathroom and references as to private parts of guys. If you like boxing, and seeing a hot sexy gal do wonders in the ring and knock the boys on their you Know What, this is the film for you.

Girlfight is a story about a troubled teen named Diana Guzman (Michelle Rodriguez). Diana is burdened by her mothers suicide and a sexist father living in a sexist community. A short temper and plenty of things to spark a fire, shes about to get kicked out of school for fighting. Her brother, Tiny (Ray Santiago), is training with Hector (Jaime Tirelli) in boxing. Diana is told by her dad, Sandro (Paul Calderon), to deliver that weeks payment for Tiny's training. While Diana is walking through the gym, she realizes thats what she wants to do. She wants to box. Diana asks her dad for money to train but he refuses because shes a girl and should do more 'girly' things. All Diana wants is to be treated like any other guy. Not looked down upon because she is a woman. She steals money from her father to begin training. Great movie. Genius, pure 'effing' genius. Recommend to anybody who needs to see a good clean movie with no 'monkey business'.

I thought this was a good little movie about finding yourself but it's ending short changed it by allowing it to resolve as a chick flick. Too bad. The acting was great. The chemistry was great. Michelle Rodriguez was the draw and she certainly was earning her acting chops here. I give this film a 7 (good) out of 10. {Drama}

I was bored and I do mean bored. It starts slow, the middle is slow, and the end is slow. The acting was not even that great. I liked very little about this film. SPOILER: I liked seeing her beat up her abusive father. That was it. The only thing worth the watch. I probably will not watch this film again unless made to. It needed a little more to pull me in. I just did not care about the family enough. It was missing something. Oh well, If you figure out what I missed let me know.

I saw this film for the first time last night and absolutely loved it. Michelle Rodriguez's performance was amazing (especiallty as it was her debut movie) she was completely believable as Diana the tough troubled girl. I liked the way that in the movie not everything worked out to provide a perfect ending, like how her Dad never saw her win her big fight and there was never a soppy 'I love you daddy' scene, it just showed a snapshot of her life and I am sure she would have continued to struggle and fight for what she wanted pretty much for the rest of her life. I also liked the ambiguity about her relationship with Adrian at the end, because after all this movie is not a fairytale! An excellent movie with brilliant performances from all especially Michelle.

Since adding my review of this movie way back when, I have been disappointed and surprised to see so many IMDb reviews that see "Girlfight" as a kind of feminist fantasy. Is everyone aware that there really are women prize-fighters, some of whom really are capable of beating the crap out of most men? What's so improbable about the final boy-girl match isn't that the girl wins, but that it's her boyfriend she has to fight. And the only feminist thing about the movie is that the women's movement is probably what made it possible to write it as a drama instead of as a comedy. But there is no feminist "message" in this movie.

In most sports movies, you'll have the corny story of triumph and it might be not too great. But this film is different. It uses it's independent edge (it won numerous awards at the Sundance and Caanes film festivals) to not be cornball, but to a good achievement. Michelle Rodriguez definately makes an credible debut as the troubled and always angry Diana, who decides a way to get out some of her aggression is in boxing, and it works, even when she has to face her boyfriend in the (improbable to be sure) ring. Better than I thought, but the liability is that Diana is always angry (so angry that any regular girl's worst day of PMS is Diana's best day) and she does some things to her family and friends that are very questionable, method and emotion wise which almost makes her not the best girl to emmulate. Pretty good, never-the-less. B+