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Oh boy, this one's really bad & I don't even know where to bwegin
to tell the story ...
So ok, after 5 years in prison, Johnny (Mekhi Phifer) is released and
wants to go straight, becoming a championship boxer. To this end, he hooks
up with stable owner and ex-champ Lou (William Forsythe), who is slow,
stoic and tough on the outside but kind-hearted, caring and wise on the
inside.
On the other hand, there is Gloria (Angelina Jolie, wearing her heir
blond for a change), who desperately wants to kill Johnny becasue she
thinks he has killed her brother - he hasn't -, but once she has him right
in front of her gun she realizes she just can't pull the trigger. Then she
learns from her boyfriend Paddy (Johnny Whitworth), whom she has just
caught banging her own alcoholic and crack-addicted mother (Rosanna
Arquette) that it was actually him who killed her brother during a robbery
he, Johnny and Gloria's bro committed ... though it totally eludes me a)
why he has killed Gloria's brother, and b) why he is telling this to her
when he has just been caught cheating on her and now desperately tries to
win her back.
When Gloria learns about that, she immediately leaves Paddy and leaves
her mother right with him, and for no reason at all, she and Johnny - the
man she has threatened with a gun not long ago - become a couple.
Meanwhile Johnny has done good when he convinced a kid, Ricky (Jade
Yorker) to stop dealing crack and instead help him work at the stables and
train as a boxer. But Johnny and Lou have also hooked up with a sleazy
boxing promoter, Boyle (Stephen Payne), who first helps Johnny to get some
good fights, but ultimately he wants him to lose a big title fight (don't
all boxing promoters want their boys to lose at some point) - but
naturally, Johnny the good boy wins, and as a result, he and Lou get into
a fight with Boyle and his men which ends with Lou accidently shooting
Boyle.
Then Paddy wants to shoot himself in front of Johnny, but when Johnny
tries to get the gun from him, a bullet accidently hits Ricky ... which
results in Jlohnny being sent to an insane asylum.
Gloria gets pregnant from Johnny, and Lou - who was surprisingly enough
not arrested for killing Boyle - arranges for Gloria to reconcile with her
mother who has since successfully fought her various addictions and is a
changed woman.
In the end, Johnny visits Paddy in the asylum, tells him that Ricky has
forgiven him for the shooting incident - surprisingly enough, Ricky seems
to have emerged from it totally unfazed - and says stuff like "I love
you, man", and in the end, the two men embrace each other with tears
in their eyes - oh my God.
So ok, the plot of this film is shit, and not in the least made b etter
that it changes diretion every few minutes, and it's not made any better
by the fact that so much incidents in the story seem to be without
consequences, like the shooting of Boyle (the whole storyline is abandoned
right after the shooting) or the shooting of Ricky (who seems to have been
not even injured by tzhe incident). But that's not even the worst aspect
of the movie, it's far worse that director Tony Cinciripini seems to
deliberately downplay the many exciting scenes of the film, all shoot-outs
and even sex scenes are so devoid of excitement that one starts to wonder
why they were even included in the film at all. Plus he doesn't even
attempt to create a certain atmosphere to make the movie more coherent, he
just seems to have had the camera mounted wherever there was space. And to
top it all of, the actors uniformly give uninteresting to dreadful
performances, and at least some of them have proven in other movies that
they could do better.
Take my advice and don't watch it. I know there are rumours around that
Angelina Jolie has a nude scene in this one, but that's actually just a
nipple popping out of her bra. Now believe me, I really like the looks of
Ms Jolie, but that bit of lovely nipple in that piece of dreadful film is
simply not worth it.
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