The Charlotte Observer from Charlotte, North Carolina • 78

MOVIES OCTOBER 8E CHARLOTTE FRIDAY, OBSERVER THE 2000 20, the MOVIES Hollywood once had a bad Code in the head hink Hollywood has lost its Think moral sex and compass? violence have gotten out of hand in movies? You should have been around in 1932. Mick LaSalle, film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, has written Lawrence a book 'Toppman called "Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood" (St. Martin's Press, 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 By the late '60s, social mores finally made the code a ridiculously outdated artifact, and it died. ANDREA Gems Diana Guzman (Michelle Rodriguez) takes a break between crises and punches in "Girlfight." Far more 'Girlfight' writer-director Karyn Kusama uses to catch moviegoers by surprise and knock us off our feet in "Girlfight." By LAWRENCE TOPPMAN Movie Critic ab, jab, uppercut. Jab, jab, jab.

Left hook, ping right cross. Knockout. That's the rhythm with dedicated featherweight Guzman bears down on dent opponents, and it's the movie review 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 Rockette, 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 by a than a is in a snap- which a named overconfirhythm female a ring of its own GIRLFIGHT GRADE: A-. STARS: Michelle Rodriguez, Jaime Tirelli, Santiago Douglas. WRITER-DIRECTOR: Karyn Kusama.

LENGTH: 111 minutes. RATING: (profanity, violence). 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 knockout takes boxing lessons because their father wants him to toughen up, is Diana's 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 A 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's.

Kusama was blessed with an understanding composer (Theodore Shapiro) and a sympathetic cinematographer (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.

Gross for the weekend of Oct. 13-16: topmovies 1 "Meet the Parents" $21.2 million Total: $58.8 million 2 "Remember the Titans" $13.1 million Total: $64.2 million 3 "Lost Souls" $8 million Total: $8 million 4 "The Ladies Man" $5.43 million Total: $5.43 million 5 "The Contender" $5.36 million Total: $5.36 million 6 "The Exorcist" $5.2 million Total: $30.5 million 7 "Dr. Tand the Women" $5 million Total: $5 million 8 "Get Carter" $2.9 million Total: $11.7 million 9 "Almost Famous" $2.2 million Total: $26.7 million 10 "Best in Show" $2.1 million Total: $3.9 million toprentals "High Fidelity" 2 "American Psycho" 3 "Mission To Mars" 4 "Any Given Sunday" 5 "U-571" 6 "Final Destination" 7 "Erin Brockovich" 8 "Magnolia" 9 "28 Days" 10 "The Cider House Rules".