GIRLFIGHT —*** 1/2 — Michelle Rodriguez, Jaime Tirelli, Paul Calderon, Santiago Douglas, Ray Santiago, Elisa Bocanegra; rated R (profanity, violence); Loews Cineplex Broadway Centre and South Towne Center Cinemas.
Diana is a young woman who lives by her fists. But one look into the eyes of Michelle Rodriguez, the remarkable young actress who plays her, and you know there's a separate fight being waged within.
That's one of the numerous accomplishments of "Girlfight," fledgling filmmaker Karyn Kusama's movie that signals the advent of a singular writer-director.
On the surface, this is the sort of movie you believe you know without having to see it: a rite-of-passage tale as time-tested as it could be (in lesser hands) trite.
Not here. To begin with, the topic of female boxing lifts the story well beyond a distaff "Rocky." Furthermore, "Girlfight" is in every way an independent movie, whereas the Sylvester Stallone saga eventually became a franchise. Among its executive producers is John Sayles, an independent movie king.
But for all the violence on view, Kusama's script insists on a real, wholly unsentimental tenderness. Diana may be good with her fists, but the lasting punches are those dealt to her self-worth and soul; the inner ones seen by anyone willing to look into her kind, sad eyes.
However, she knows where she feels at home — in the Brooklyn boxing gym that her father Sandro (Paul Calderon) intended for her none-too-sports-minded brother, Tiny (Ray Santiago).
And so Diana embarks upon the regime meant for the bookish Tiny, which means incurring no shortage of wrath in New York's macho Latino milieu.
True to the trajectory of such tales, Diana soon finds the substitute home in the gym that her father cannot, or will not, provide. Hector (Jaime Tirelli) is a Panamanian trainer with a genuine interest in his charge, while approaches of a more amorous sort fall to Adrian (Santiago Douglas), a fellow boxer.
The narrative ends up pitting the lovers against one another in the ring, but it's the world beyond boxing that Kusama so deftly invokes.
"Why not aerobics?" people say of Diana, her newfound obsession subjected to the inevitable chauvinism. "Would it kill you to wear a skirt?" her father snaps later, his own sense of gender identity crumbling by the moment.
At times, "Girlfight" doesn't subvert expectation — particularly during a "some father you are" scene of reproach that audiences have seen before.
And we can spot for ourselves the gently submerged pain on Diana's face: "Life with you is war," Diana is told, as if we can't already tell.
Still, Kusama's honesty and heart prevail, abetted greatly by a faultless cast, among whom Santiago's Tiny contributes an especially keen character study of a young man refusing to play his allotted role.
All the men are first-rate in a movie that otherwise belongs to Rodriguez, whose sulkiness gives way as this quick-tempered woman becomes a swan.
"So, I'm something," she says near the end, the assertion a half-question. "Yes, you are," replies her lover, Adrian.
By that point, we've gleaned as much already: "Girlfight" is a contender.
"Girlfight" is rated R for strong profanity and boxing violence. Running time: 113 minutes.