This is a punch you see coming

The words “inspired by the life of” can cover a multitude of on-screen sins, and most of them are on display in the Meg Ryan-starring boxing drama “Against the Ropes.”

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with filmmakers working from the premise articulated by producer Robert W. Cort, who says in the press notes that “we all knew this was not going to be a biographical film.... We didn’t want that.” The problem is that instead of making up something interesting, “Against the Ropes” has come up with a story and a film as pedestrian and obvious as its title.

Though it has been on the shelf for almost a year after its initial release date conflicted with the invasion of Iraq, “Against the Ropes” is not as completely woebegone as that delay might indicate. As written by Cheryl Edwards and directed by Charles S. Dutton, it’s a workmanlike production that’s simply too predictable and too preposterous to hold our interest.

The film’s best performance, interestingly enough, comes from Dutton, an excellent actor who for some years now has also directed. Though he plays one of “Against the Ropes’ ” stable of overly familiar boxing characters -- the veteran trainer who, yes, has seen too much -- Dutton brings an innate dignity and believability to the role of Felix Reynolds that the other performers match only sporadically.

Felix Reynolds, however, is not this film’s protagonist. That is the real-life Jackie Kallen, boxing’s most successful female manager, an attractive woman whose tough-talking, tight-clothes-wearing persona and ringside lifestyle so appealed to Hollywood they expropriated it for use in a fisticuffs fairy tale that apparently has only a passing resemblance to reality.

The real Jackie Kallen’s story happened a decade ago in Detroit, the movie takes place in present-day Cleveland. The real Jackie was married and had two children, the movie Jackie is single and apparently celibate. The real Jackie stumbled on boxing after a successful career in journalism and public relations, the movie Jackie was infatuated since childhood and even had a favorite uncle Ray-Ray, a fighter who died young but not before giving her a mantra to live by: “Pretty and tough can do anything.” If they had to make things up, couldn’t they have made up something smarter?

Reality and this movie do have one point in common: In both, Jackie discovers and mentors a promising young fighter and pushes him toward the championship. In real life it was James “Lights Out” Toney; in the film, “Lethal” Luther Shaw, stoutly played by “ER” veteran Omar Epps. Any similarities to persons living or dead is presumably coincidental.

In the film version of Jackie’s life, she moves deftly from one standard situation to another. Though she dresses hot, she is cool and calculating, putting up with a secretary’s job only because it gets her close to her beloved boxing. She flirts with the local sportscaster (Tim Daly) as easily as she mouths off to Tony Shalhoub’s local Mafioso promoter (doesn’t every town have one?), but she is always looking for the chance to get ahead.

That chance comes when, in a scenario too strange to be given away, she makes Luther’s acquaintance and offers to manage him. He is naturally suspicious, not to say dubious, but Our Gal is determination itself, and soon enough Luther is on the familiar boxing movie treadmill: learning the fundamentals, working on his temper, wading through tank town bouts, dreaming about being champion.

Do things sound like they are going too smoothly? Of course they are. But don’t worry, personality differences between Jackie and Luther’s girlfriend, Renee (Kerry Washington), and ego battles between Jackie and the fighter soon create the bogus crisis that proves it’s always darkest before the dawn.

Given that she is not the first actress that comes to mind to play a character described by producer Cort as a “a beautiful, thirtysomething Jewish woman from the suburbs,” it was adventurous of Meg Ryan to take on this role and you have to admire the nerve it must have required to throw herself into this.

Even Ryan’s passion isn’t enough to overcome “Against the Ropes’ ” air of unreality or dialogue like “the world is not an oyster, it’s a smelly tank full of dirty water and sharks. It’s not that easy to swim.” With projects like this, sinking isn’t an option, it’s inevitable.

*

‘Against the Ropes’

MPAA rating: PG-13, for crude language, violence, brief sensuality and some drug material

Times guidelines: considerable boxing violence and a generally unsavory ambience.

Meg Ryan ... Jackie Kallen

Omar Epps ... Luther Shaw

Tony Shalhoub ... Sam LaRocca

Tim Daly ... Gavin Reese

Kerry Washington ... Renee

Charles S. Dutton ... Felix Reynolds

A Cort/Madden production, released by Paramount Pictures. Director Charles S. Dutton. Producers Robert W. Cort, David Madden. Executive producers Steven Roffer, Jonathan Pillot, Scarlett Lacey. Screenplay Cheryl Edwards. Cinematographer Jack Green. Editor Eric L. Beason. Costumes Ruth Carter. Music Michael Kamen. Production design Sandra Kybartas. Running time 1 hour, 51 minutes. In general release.