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.

I usually enjoy Meg Ryan movies, but in this one I felt she was stilted and trying a bit too hard to be her character. Maybe because I am so used to seeing her in other roles, but I think she is abandoning what she is really good at i.e. romantic comedies. She also appeared to have had a lot of botox and collagen injections so her face showed absolutely no emotion at all. And what was with the accent? Also not very good was the music which sounded like it came from a Disney made-for TV movie and in places was quite annoying and inappropriate. The plot was really formulaic and had no surprises, and in some places jumped around and made you feel like you were missing events. Definitely avoid this one.

Sloppy, sentimental boxing comedy-drama is based on successful female boxing manager Jackie Kallen's tough rise to the top ('loosely inspired' seems a more appropriate term). Meg Ryan plays Kallen with a streetwise edge in her voice and is appropriately cast, but her outlandish wardrobe certainly belies the salary of a glorified secretary, and Tony Shalhoub embarrasses himself as a 'Godfather'-styled kingpin of the boxing mecca (he dresses and talks like John Gotti, but only seems to have one client). Charles Dutton directed, and his own performance as the veteran trainer (yet another cliché) is at least warmly thought out--ironically, it's the best acting here. "Ropes" is a lackluster film, put together and distributed as if nobody involved had a hope in hell for it. The boxing scenes are slapdash, with Ryan walking right across the ring at one point to deliver a last-second pep-talk to Omar Epps, the kind of conspiratorial speech that is older than dirt (why doesn't she just say, "Win one for the Gipper"?). Omar's rise to success is swifter than a bad odor, which is pretty much what this misfire leaves in its wake. *1/2 from ****

Meg Ryan is a bona fide movie star and a damn good actress and she would have to be to make a boxing film full of clichés watchable but she does that here. I'm not exactly recommending this for others but without Ryan in the starring role would anyone have even the most remote idea of viewing this? Story is (very loosely) based on the first lady of boxing Jackie Kallen (Ryan) who was brought up around the sport by her father and has always dreamed of managing and steering a fighter to the championship.*****SPOILER ALERT***** One day (by accident) she notices a young man named Luther Shaw (Omar Epps) who beats up two drug thugs without help and Jackie thinks she has a winner on her hands but it takes some doing to convince him to give boxing a go. Jackie asks the help from long time trainer Felix Reynolds (Charles S. Dutton) who guides Luther into the pro ranks and teaches him the finer points of the fight game but when Luther starts winning his bouts in spectacular fashion Jackie starts getting as much attention (or more) as her fighter. The boxing scene in the Midwest is controlled by Cleveland promoter Sam LaRocca (Tony Shalhoub) who tries everything he can to stop her but since he owns the Middleweight Champion of the World a big fight between the champ and Luther is inevitable. Because she's an attractive woman Jackie becomes a mini-celebrity and starts spending too much time away from the gym and Luther himself who eventually starts to resent her.This is directed by Dutton himself who has dabbled in directing before but this is (to date) his biggest project and while I sure won't mistake his talent for Spielberg's I think he still shows that he can handle smaller productions. Besides the obvious clichés that seem to haunt a lot of boxing flicks I think what goes wrong here is that they didn't stay true to the source of the material because the real Kallen has had a pretty interesting life. Kallen help guide the career of James "Lights Out" Toney (who is what Epps's character is loosely based on) but their relationship ended very badly and I would have enjoyed seeing that portrayed on screen. Kallen also has twice beaten breast cancer so this proves she's a tough person to dissuade but the film instead wanted to give a more commercial appeal to audiences by making the script concentrate on how she allowed her celebrity status to get the better of her. Some have said that Ryan isn't exactly the right actress to play such a tough talking person but I found her performance pretty good and I've always considered her to be a pretty stubborn person herself so I thought the choice of casting her to be a good one. Besides the angle of a woman in the fight game this film is just too predictable and clichéd to recommend but I do give Ryan credit for lending her talent to this attempt and I do think that if anyone is interested in viewing this it's because of her undeniable appeal.