The Charlotte Observer from Charlotte, North Carolina • 78

FRIDAY OCTOBER 20 2000 THE CHARIOTTE OBSERVER RAW ON MOVIES Gross for the weekend of Oct 13-16: top movies "Meet the Parents" $212 million Total: $588 million Hollywood once had a bad Code in the head Think Hollywood has lost its moral compass? Think sex and violence have gotten out of hand in movies? You should have been around in 1932 Mick LaSalle film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle Lawrence Stten Thnnmfln called "Remember the Titans" $131 million Total: $642 million "Lost Souls" $8 million Total: $8 million "Comoli- i-V' m4 ANDREA MORINIScreen Gems cated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code UnllAA-nH" "The Ladies Man" $543 million Total: $543 million Diana Guzman (Michelle Rodriguez) takes a break between crises and punches in "Girlfight" "The Contender" $536 million Total: $536 million inner by a knockout "The Exorcist" $52 million Total: $305 million Far more than a female 'Rocky' 'Girlfight' is in a ring of its own "Dr and the Women" $5 million Total: $5 million GIRLFIGHT GRADE: A- STARS: Michelle Rodriguez Jaime Ti-relli Santiago Douglas WRrTER-DIRECTOR: Karyn Kusama LENGTH: HI minutes RATING: (profanity violence) By LAWRENCE TOPPMAN Movie Critic Jab jab uppercut Jab jab jab Left hook snapping right cross Knockout That's the rhythm with which a dedicated featherweight named Guzman bears down on overconfident opponents and it's the rhythm "Get Carter" $29 million Total: $117 million "Almost Famous" $22 million Total: $267 million "Best in Show" $21 million Total: $39 million toprentals wnter-director Karyn Kusama uses to catch moviegoers by sur- NWf (St Mar-tin's Press $2595) Turner Classic Movies will program an evening of films related to it next Friday and they're eye-openingly frank In "A Free Soul" attorney's daughter Norma Shearer has a hot affair with charismatic gangster Clark Gable then ends up with the polo player who loves her (Leslie Howard) In "When Ladies Meet" Ann Harding waits while husband Frank Morgan has a series of sexual liaisons and returns between lapses "The Animal Kingdom" and "Let Us Be Gay" round out the block of programming As LaSalle points out Hollywood felt free to depict life as people really lived it in the Jazz Age and the early part of the Great Depression Women could be treated as men's equals whether yielding to sexual desires or asserting the need for other kinds of respect Adultery was frowned on but regarded as a common nuisance not swept under the rug Crime wasn't allowed to pay but criminals were shown to have attractive qualities This all stopped in 1934 when the Production Code went into effect Suddenly sex was a forbidden topic -even married couples often slept in twin beds and characters were either good (and thus rewarded by life) or wicked (and punished) Filmmakers chipped pieces off the code but slowly: The word "underpants" couldn't be heard until 1959 in "Anatomy of a Murder" By the late '60s social mores finally made the code a ridiculously outdated artifact and it died "High Fidelity" takes boxing lessons because their father wants him to toughen up is Diana's entree to the world where satisfaction awaits She realizes she can be a successful fighter if she toughens her body sharpens her timing builds her endurance and channels her rage She convinces Hector (Jaime Tirelli) who respects her determination to train her She befriends up-and-coming Adrian (Santiago Douglas) who's in her economic and weight classes and sees the ring as a way out of poverty Strangely enough boxing lets Diana develop her feminine side She becomes more relaxed more open to friendships or romance if Adrian can get serious about shedding an old girlfriend and more self-confident She realizes that victories are transient and losses aren't disastrous Yet just as she blossoms as a person circumstances threaten her happiness (One of them a major plot point I couldn't believe is the largest drawback to the script) Kusama cuts the film cleverly beginning with objective third-person shots and gradually having us identify with Diana by revealing her viewpoint Kusama handles the fights especially well: We look out of Diana's eyes her opponent's even the ref Kusama was blessed with an understanding composer (Theodore Shapiro) and a sympathetic cinema-tographer (Patrick Cady) both crucial to a low-budget production The veteran Tirelli (also a Sayles alum) weighs in quietly and effectively Rodriguez though carries the picture away on her muscular shoulders Kusama found her at an open call in New York City and the novice stepped into the role with complete assurance and a wide emotional range If this part doesn't typecast her and glamorized magazine photos of Rodriguez suggest it won't a major career may await her "American Psycho" "Mission To Mars" and absorbed some of his technique along with some of his vision (He turns up as one of Diana's high school teachers and producers Sarah Green Martha Griffin and Maggie Renzi have all worked with him) Yet it's also a piece only Kusama would've made She's boxed herself noncompetitively and she knows these sweaty little gyms from the inside She's seen the placards pasted on the walls: "It's not the size of the dog in the fight it's the size of the fight in the dog" or "When you're not training someone else is training to kick your Only somebody who has stepped into the squared circle could know the sweet release of a well-aimed hook and the vulnerability that washes over you when a foe rocks your world with a wild left Kusama herself never lived only to fight but Diana (Michelle Rodriguez) does The first time we see her she's tearing into a stuck-up classmate who abuses a friend Her anger flares in all directions as far out of control as a brush fire in a dry July She wars with other members of the senior class school administrators a father who has taken her for granted since her mother died even the gentle brother who would rather pound out rhythms on musical instruments than on somebody else's chin This brother who grudgingly "Any Given Sunday" "U-571" "Final Destination" reIffi1 prise and knock us off our feet in "Girlfight" Her debut starts with the slow familiar pattern we associate with boxing movies: scenes on the light and heavy bags jump-rope work under the skeptical eye of a veteran trainer sparring in the moldy ring of a gym where water seeps through the walls and dim fluorescent lights prevent boxers from focusing on the stained headgear and battered gloves But this movie has a twist from the start: The would-be Rocky is a Rock-ette Diana Guzman who's trying to fight her way out of a broken home the Brooklyn projects and a general sense of ennui that's sucking down so many young men and women in Red Hook The movie ends not with a championship fight or a magazine cover for Diana but with a sense of self-awareness she never expected to have The effect is as potent as a straight right to the solar plexus If this sounds like the kind of picture indie veteran John Sayles might have made it is: gritty inexpensive focused on the disenfranchised It comes from the pen of a woman who served as his assistant for four years "Erin Brockovich" "Magnolia" "28 Days" "The Cider House Rules".