Against the Ropes

I don't follow boxing, but the lady that Meg Ryan portrays is apparently the female ground-breaker as a boxing manager. The movie is set in Cleveland, on a dare she finds a local black man who appears to have potential, she gets a retired trainer to look at her kid, and together they make a winner. Tony Shaloub is the best here, as the ruthless local boxing manager and promoter who gets his cronies to blacklist her and prevent her boxer from fighting in local fights. So she has to take him to places like Buffalo, NY and cities in Florida to win fight that will eventually get him a title fight. A different role for Meg Ryan, she changes her voice and has to play a "hard" woman. In the DVD extras, the real lady boxing manager is interviewed and it is a nice addition to the story that was inspired by her life, but many things have been changed so it is not really a biographical sketch. The movie is better than its IMDb rating would indicate.