Movie Review : Subtly Filmed ‘Ropes’ Packs a Punch

“On the Ropes” is another in a stream of documentaries that explore the potential of the form so effectively that they become as involving and suspenseful as the best fictional films. Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen are the very models of contemporary documentarians: They win the trust of their subjects to the extent that they are the proverbial flies on the wall, eavesdropping on life. Eschewing on-camera interviews, they concentrate on building trust to gain the most comprehensive opportunities possible to observe their people in as many revealing circumstances as they can.

They then assemble their footage in a straightforward, unpretentious manner that makes us feel that we are witnessing the unfolding of their subjects’ lives with the kind of detachment and fullness that allows us to decide for ourselves how we feel about these people and their fates--precisely the kind of distancing the most gifted filmmakers have always created.

Actual people and their lives have to become for us as real on the screen as characters brought to life by writers, directors and actors. And in telling the stories of four individuals whose lives intersect at Brooklyn’s New Bed-Stuy Boxing Center, Burstein and Morgen--who is also the film’s sensitive cinematographer--allow their four main characters to captivate us like stars.

Harry Keitt is the center’s trainer, a wise yet challenging father figure to young people in need of self-respect and direction, inspiration and hope to make something of their lives against often overwhelming odds. The filmmakers focus on Keitt and three of these young people. Keitt sees in Noel Santiago both intelligence and boxing talent, but while Noel can work up considerable dedication in the ring, he is a chronic truant, one of the children of a single mother and a former drug addict. Keitt is hoping that a desire to win in the ring will ignite in Noel the urge to become confident and constructive in his life.

Motivation is no problem for Tyrene Manson, a pretty, bright young woman aiming for a career in boxing while trying to act as a mother to her two young cousins, whose father is a drug addict with AIDS. Tyrene has moved into a small rented house with all three, determined to do the best she can for the children but caught up in a drug bust triggered by the father’s sale of cocaine to an undercover cop.

Tyrene finds herself in a courtroom the very day she is preparing for her Golden Gloves bout that evening. Tyrene’s predicament just begs for the filmmakers to load on the sympathy, but by quietly recording events as they unfold they achieve a more dramatic impact.

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Under Keitt’s coaching, muscular, affable George Walton wins a number of championship matches and is now eager to turn professional, attracting the attention of manager Mickey Marcello, who wants him to go to Las Vegas to train under Eddie Mustafa Muhammed, former world light-heavyweight champion. This development brings us to the heart of Keitt’s own troubled personal history, which he has struggled successfully to overcome. Determined to help young people avoid the mistakes he made, he nonetheless would like to hitch his wagon to a star--but not at the youths’ expense.

He is willing to step aside as George’s trainer, as painful a disappointment as it is for him, for the good of the highly promising fighter. The question is, will Walton be able to realize that Keitt has his priorities straight or come to see him simply as wanting a piece of the young fighter’s action, like everyone else? Walton is clearly intelligent and reflective but his inexperience in the ways of the world of professional boxing has the potential to turn him cynical all too soon.

In recording life as it unfolds in the course of a year, “On the Ropes” not only defies prediction as to its outcome but is in some ways downright confounding. By the time it is over the only certainty seems to be Keitt himself; he’ll never give up on himself or the young people who come to him for guidance and caring as much as to attain skill in boxing.

“On the Ropes” also leaves us realizing how pervasive drugs and the crime, disease and heartbreak that go with them remains in America’s inner cities, how vulnerable the impoverished minorities are to injustice, and how boxing, for all the criticism it draws as a sport, stubbornly remains a promising way out for so many young people.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: language, drug-related issues, adult themes but suitable for children of middle-school age.

‘On the Ropes’

A WinStar Cinema release. Producers-directors Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen. Executive producers Jennifer Fox, Jonathan Cohen. Cinematographer Morgen. Editors Nancy Baker, Burstein. Music Theodore Shapiro. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

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