Dir: Lorenzo Doumani
Star: Sophia-Adella Hernandez, Edouardo Yanes, Tony Plana, William McNamara, Maria Conchita Alonzo

I was going to write this article as the Knockout drinking game, with contestants having to take a swig each time a boxing cliché appears – but an interest in the health of readers prevents me from so doing, because this film is so full of them, that you’d be dead of alcoholic poisoning before the end of the first act. I don’t know whether Doumani had never seen a boxing movie before (his career gives no reason to suggest he has, including such highlights as Bug Buster), or simply chose to combine them all into one. For this is the kind of diabolical script you would get if you distilled every boxing flick down.

The only significant difference is that here, the hero is…well, a heroine, Belle (Hernandez). Though nobody really bothers to mention it, because she’s so busy slogging her way through the usual problems that have bedevilled pugilistic wannabes since Edison was turning the crank: unsupportive family, a dubious managers, gym-owners doubtful of your talent, a ferocious opponent, etc. So, here goes with an approximate listing, in dialogue and images, of the things you’ll have seen a million times before – just never in such distilled and condensed strength.

The Characters

• “Was papa a great boxer?”
  “He was the best…”
• “What should I be when I grow up?”
  “You can be whatever you want, because nothing is impossible. That’s for you to find out, and once you do, don’t let anyone hold you back. Let your light shine…”.
• Father (Plana) is a cop, who works nights so he can spend the days “with the kids at the gym”.
• “That’s what your Mom used to say. Think she’d be proud of how we turned out?” Yep, Mum (Miss Venezuela 1975, Maria Conchita Alonzo) is dead – but do you think that’s going to stop her from turning up? Chance would be a fine thing.
• Dad bravely talks two Hispanic kids into putting their guns down. I think he largely bores them into submission, with a monologue including the following: “I know you’re scared, but this isn’t the way…You have your whole lives ahead of you. What’s it gonna be: do you lay the weapon down, or do we lay you in the ground?”

The Plot

• Belle’s home-girl Sandra is a boxer – at a fight againt Tanya ‘The Terminator’ Tessaro (real-life fighter Fredia Gibbs) we also meet Michael DiMarco, whose business card might as well read “Slimy Manager”.
• Needless to say, Tessaro destroys Sandra – thanks largely to what one review described as Sandra’s “leading with her face”. The film, inevitably (a word that will crop up a lot in this review, so get used to it), goes into slow-mo as Sandra collapses to the floor with a “NOOOOOOOOOO…SANDRAAAAAA” from Belle. Cut to a hospital bed, where Belle says things like “You were always the strong one…I’m gonna take care of you.” If I was Sandra, I’d be looking up Kevorkian’s number in my Rolodex about now, rather than sitting through:
  “Do you believe in fate…that things were meant to be…that everyone has a destiny?”
  “I hope Sandra’s destiny isn’t to die. Or be a vegetable because of me.”
  “It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. She loves it. She lives for it…In the ring, that’s where she lives…The only thing crazy in life, is not living it.” Is it just me, or does it seems rather crass to say that while your friend is in intensive care?
• Equally inevitably, Belle signs up with DiMarco – “Boxing – I guess I’ve always wanted to do it.” He takes her to see Ron Regent, wheelchair-bound promoter played by Paul Winfield, who’s about the best actor present despite having to handle dialogue like:
  “So, you think you got the goods, huh?”
  “Yeah, I got the goods.”

The Difficulties

• Dad tries to dissuade her: “Professional boxing is brutal…You’re talking crazy. I don’t want to hear any more of this”.
• She keeps training anyway. Oh, what a surprise.
• The only element underplayed to this point is her mother’s deat…no, hang on – what’s this flashback?
  “I don’t have good news. The tests reveal you have a malignant tumor in your frontal lobe.”
  “So how much time do I have?
  “It’s hard to say. But not long.”
  —-
  “You have got to be strong…let’s appreciate the little time we have left.
  “But you gotta promise me something…you gotta let her find a way to let her shine…”
• Inevitably, Dad comes along to first fight, inspiring her to victory.
• Then we get a montage of further victories, Belle tending to Sandra, Ron listening to money, fake mag covers, and the usual training sequences, all of which leads to:

Revenge

• But first, Sandra regains consciousness. “The doctors – they say that I’ll never walk again”
• Belle fights with DiMarco because he wants to keep her from fighting Tessaro: “I thought you were different..but you’re just another ungrateful wetback bitch. You were just another ignorant barrio lowlife. You’re nothing without me.”
• Ron Regent arranges the fight with Tessaro instead – when announcing this, Belle pretends to be going to Las Vegas to marry DiMarco. How amusing!
• Another training montage.
• “Thanks for being there, Dad”. Except he isn’t, because the “next few days are all hype, but I’ll be there for the fight…in your corner…”
• And, inevitably, he won’t. He gets shot by drug-scum as he tries to protect a kid.
• Cue more slow-mo and – a particularly crass touch, this – blood spattering across a magazine cover with Belle’s picture on it.
• Funeral footage. “He loved you just like a son”.
• “I get the feeling he’s gonna be there at the fight”.
• Stultifyingly-stilted chat from Tessaro: “What’s my name? The Terminator! What am I gonna do to her? Terminate her!” And they claim boxing doesn’t promote brain-damage.

The Big Fight

• Belle has a glowing backlit vision – is she going to be abducted by aliens? Sadly not: it’s only her Mum and Dad, telling her, inevitably, to “Let your light shine”.
• Tessaro’s ring-entrance is like a discard from Grace Jones, complete with feather head-dress and dance routine, totally destroying her credibility and threat.
• Shots of Sandra, shouting “Get up, Belle – c’mon!”. That’ll help.
• One last montage: round cards, trainer in corner, and occasional boxing, all shot in a manner that is startling only in its tedium.
• With Tessaro losing, she butts Belle, forcing the bout towards a hugely contrived conclusion
• Albeit after another glowing, Let Your Light Shine-y, vision.
• Belle has just one more round to knock Tessaro out – will she do it?
• Any guesses?

Right down to the final scene, where flowers are laid on Mom and Dad’s grave, this film is crass, predictable and jaw-droppingly badly written. You can’t really blame the cast for this – they are all trying pretty hard, it’s just the material that doesn’t leave any room for improvement. Even though it came out before Girlfight, it is a waste of space on every level: Doumani’s lack of script-writing talent would get him thrown off any self-respecting daytime soap. His trust fund was allegedly taken away and poured into The Cotton Club, but on the showing here, I think it might have been higher forces at work, trying desperately to keep him out of the movie business.

Footnotes:

• Some other, just as savage, reviews:
  • “0 stars”
  • “possibly the worst boxing movie ever made”
  • 5 out of 100 – “This grade-Z programmer is a painfully earnest, clichéd, amateurish waste of time”
  • 0 stars – “could make you swear off movies”.
  • “a relentlessly stereotypical script”
  • “a burning hell of extreme sincerity” – a relatively kind review!
• An interview with Doumani
• Fredia Gibbs’ site
• Other women’s boxing movies

Yes: poof balls. I think this is one product found in the local supermarket here, which will not be making its way across the Atlantic, at least not under that name. They’re harmless enough – both literally and figuratively being simply soft foam, moulded into the shape of footballs, etc. for indoor use – but you can only presume no Britons were involved in the naming of it. It’s certainly something to point out to any visiting Brits, just as Chris was mightily amused to discover that we keep faggots in the frozen foods section at Somerfield.

Over the past four months, I’ve come to appreciate keenly the truth of the statement about Britain and America being two nations divided by a common language. This is not necessarily a bad thing: road-rage is a lot safer when the recipient of your abuse doesn’t understand what you’re saying, especially in a country where the carrying of guns is one step short of mandatory. Smile as you stick your V’s up at someone, and greet them with a shout of “Oi! Tosser!”, and you’ll probably get away with it. How I sniggered the first time I heard “wanker” crop up in Buffy the Vampire Slayer – albeit in the Dick Van Dyke-reborn accent of Spike.

I think the crossover is perhaps easier the way I’ve done it, going from Britain to America, because of the huge amount of American culture that we got to see in the UK. I imagine pretty much everyone knows that Starsky and Hutch slid across the hood of their car, filled it with gas and locked criminals in the trunk. Actually, I never recall either of them shutting perps up like that, but if they had, it would have been in the trunk. And definitely not in the boot.

You might think that simple things like chemical elements would be common on both sides of the Atlantic. But, no. At position 13 on the periodic table in Robert’s chemistry book is something called aluminum. Note that carefully: not aluminium, but aluminum. This explains why, when I asked for aluminium foil in the supermarket once, the expression on the poor assistant was about what you’d expect to get, after explaining the Theory of Relativity to your faithful pet spaniel: a desperate desire to please, mixed with absolute and utter incomprehension. [Interestingly, aluminium was the accepted spelling in the States up until 1925, when the American Chemical Society decided to change. Never let it be said these editorials aren’t educational] You gradually get used to this – last time I went in, I was mouthing “garbage sacks” all the way round the aisles, just in case I couldn’t find what I used to call rubbish bags.

Even where we have the same word, pronunciation may not necessarily be the same. Garage: is it GA-rage or ga-RAGE? Man-DA-tory or MAN-da-TORY? We may be easily amused, but many are the happy hours Chris and I have spend debating such issues. It’s not an argument as such, because neither of us have the slightest intention of changing – and I wouldn’t want Chris to change, any more than she would want me to change. For what seemed normal in Britain is now a badge of my difference and independence; when you get complete strangers suddenly asking where your accent is from, it freaks you out the first time, but eventually, it becomes something to which you warm.

Personally, I wear such differences as a badge of honour (note spelling, with a “u” – much as this Yanqui spell-checker might disagree!). Warm beer, fish and chips…and an interesting pronounciation of the word “vitamin”. Doesn’t it make you proud to be British?

Somewhat ironic how I manage to keep the editorials coming while my parents are here, but as soon as they go away, I play truant. I blame some kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome. I wonder if I could claim relief under the laws here which prevent discrimination against anyone with a disability? I probably could, going by a couple of recent cases in the paper. One woman claimed that she should be allowed to keep her large dog in an apartment complex that didn’t allow them, because it helped her depression (she was a bit vague on why it had to be a large dog), while another woman, fired from her job for lateness due to excessive preening and time spent putting on her make-up, is now suing under the same law, claiming that she has obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Whatever happened to people taking responsibility for their own actions? Or even, it’s your problem, don’t expect us to deal with it? Sorry, mate: not allowed to do that any more, it’s always something else’s fault. And if you can’t find a syndrome to blame, feel free to make one up!

Speaking of excessive preening, there was an entire convention’s-worth of that going on last night, with it being the Oscars. It was my first experience of seeing them live; the time-lag meant that when I was in Britain, they were on in the middle of the night, and besides, the nominees were usually uninteresting anyway. This year was rather different, with both Gladiator and Crouching Tiger getting a sheaf of nominations, so I had something to cheer for.

Overall, it wasn’t as turgid as I feared – the most boring thing was the new Pepsi commercial featuring Britney Spears, which had lost even my interest half-way through the first time it was screened: yes, you’re saying “Drink Pepsi” – we get the point already! Though I confess that we were rarely sitting there in rapt attention: dinner was had, everything cleared away, orders were packed and much chatting was done, in between the actual envelope-opening. Steve Martin isn’t a person I have a great deal of time for, but he did a decent-enough job as host, whizzing through proceedings breezily enough [After one joke he made about Tom Hanks, Mr.H did not look pleased in the slightest, which is enough reason on its own to put Martin up in my estimation a notch or two]

Not all Oscars are equal, however – I noticed that short and long documentaries got cobbled together with one presenter (as did original and adapted screenplays, which tells you a great deal about the position of the writer on the Hollywood totem-pole). Not too bothered about that though, when it looked as if every feature-length documentary was about one repressed minority or other – the bleeding-heart agenda of Hollywood strikes again. I blame Steven Spielberg, myself.

The acceptance speeches were interesting; one of the Crouching Tiger winners seemed to want to name-check everyone in Far East individually, rattling them off with a speed which seemed more befitting dialogue from a Stephen Chow film. At the other end, Steven Soderbergh said he’d thank people later, and just gave a hearty “well done” to everyone who’s an artist. Gee, thanks, Steve! And then there was Julia Roberts in uber-flight; going by that performance, I’m not sure how much of the applause was her brain cells banging together. And finally, I noticed they’d made a point of ditching “And the winner is…” in favour of “And the Oscar goes to…”. Winning implies losing, and in modern America, there can be no such thing.

Or if you do lose, it’s surely just the fault of your obsessive-compulsive disorder. Now, who can you sue?

Messages on DVDTalk.com

The following thread was copied from DVDTalk.com, because I don’t think it exists there any more, but it gives a good sense of how good PayPal Customer Service is i.e. not at all…

speedzon21
January 19, 2001 08:39 AM

Does anyone have any idea how to get in touch with PayPal, other than through their website fill in form (maybe by phone…)? I am desparate. I won a Yahoo! auction in October and the seller went defunct. I have tried relentlessly to contact PayPal and have filled out all their damn forms and sent all the appropriate materials, but they refuse to return my emails and I’m desparate to wrap up my claim. I have no idea what the status is and I’m owed $500! Please help in any way possible!!! Any ideas Geoff?

DVDoholic
January 19, 2001 10:55 AM

I have had trouble with paypal also. I will never use them again. Someone tried to pay me with a stolen credit card, and my money was tied up for months. The only people at paypal that were any help were Todd, he is a CSR, and Amy, she is a supervisor. Ask for either of them, and don’t waste your time with the others. No one ever responded to the emails I sent them either.

titanic12
January 19, 2001 08:40 PM

I too have had problems with them, they need to shape up or ship out. I too am waiting for 75.00 from them, its been 2mths. When I make a payment, I have to do it three or four times for it to go thru.

mswell
January 22, 2001 12:27 PM

PayPal’s customer service is ridiculous. I asked for a supervisor today, and this lady said she didn’t have one. Grrr. Had to call about 5 times, and my account is STILL RESTRICTED WRONGLY! GRRRRRRRR

brown234
January 22, 2001 01:38 PM

Paypal has also wrongly restricted my account, and i’ve been trying to get it unrestricted for a month now. It has nearly 500 dollars in it and I am astounded by this company’s lack of help. I have emailed probably 25 times and gotten 2 replies and calling isn’t any help either. Once I get my money from this place I will never use them again.

wabio
January 22, 2001 02:44 PM

Yup, the people at Paypal are a bunch of pretentious dolts. They have no idea of what customer service is. I’ve never had any of my problems resolved…they just kind of ignore you and treat you like an idiot. If it wasn’t free to use, I’d say the place would go belly up within weeks.

mswell
January 22, 2001 04:09 PM

Just hassle them daily non-stop. Ask to speak with a supervisor right away and tell them you emailed a zillion times and called a zillion times. I think today was my 10th call or something and they FINALLY unblocked my account. God, they are awful when it comes to customer service. I would advise to keep your money in there for umm, as less time as possible. i know someone personally that has had money taken back from their account for a transaction FOUR MONTHS ago. I hope they can prevent the real fraudulent people instead of hassling people that haven’t done anything wrong.

trexkerry
January 22, 2001 09:34 PM

I ordered $2700 worth of stuff from a seller (who took the money and ran) on Yahoo auctions in AUGUST, filled out all of the forms, and was only given back half of the money. It took the better part of 2 solid months of emails back and forth to finally get the rest of my money. At least I did finally get it back.

brown234
January 23, 2001 01:26 PM

Well, after a month of emailing and calling PayHELL they finally unrestricted my account today. I hope things go well for anyone else trying to get their account unrestricted.

cape123
January 23, 2001 03:53 PM

I have been hearing complaints about PAYPAL all the time. I am thinking about closing my account in fear that some of this might happen to me. I too have heard numerous stories about Paypal’s horrible customer service. Lets keep this thread going to inform everyone that PAYPAL isn’t the great company everyone thinks it is.

PayPal is a brilliantly simple idea. Unfortunately, only half of that statement applies to PayPal Customer Service, who are without a doubt, the biggest bunch of useless tossers – not a word I use often, but in this case, even I can’t find a better one – on the Internet.

This started when I tried to open a personal account – we’ve got one here, for the Trash City jewellery business, but I wanted a separate one of my own. If I was buying Chris a birthday present, the last thing I wanted was for its purchase to turn up on our account! Already being a business member, this should be a piece of cake.

Or so I thought. And the first part was, indeed, plain sailing. But when I typed in the credit card details, it was rejected because, so they claimed, they could not verify the billing address. A call to PayPal Customer Services (or, to be more exact, an unanswered email, on February 8th, and a follow-up call – it’s nice to see PayPal supporting care in the community by employing the mentally retarded) revealed that I had to type it in exactly as it is on my credit card statement. This I did. Still no dice.

A further flurry of attempting to communicate with the dead followed. Here’s PayPal’s next letter to me, dated March 8th – a month down the line:

“I apologize for the inconvenience in not being able to add/use the credit card ending 1134 in the PayPal system. Since we are a non face-to-face transaction provider, our process for accepting cards is more stringent and complicated. This process helps prevent the use of stolen and unauthorized cards for making PayPal payments. Because this process is very complex, it does occasionally impact valid cards. The denial of this credit card is not reflective of your credit worthiness. In these instances where a good card fails these checks, we suggest you try another card in the system.”

To which I replied, that same day:

Unfortunately, trying “another card” is not possible. The credit card you rejected is my sole one, which I have held for over a decade – without, I might add, having ever exceeded my credit limit or abused it in any way.

While I accept that you need to be stringent about accepting cards, you are the first company to refuse to acknowledge it; other “non face-to-face transaction providers” (for example, Amazon) have been quite happy to accept it for on-line purchases. It would thus seem that the problem is with your system, rather than my card.

But even if an automated system refused to accept it, a single phone-call would surely be sufficient to confirm that the details I provided were accurate, and that the card is neither “stolen” nor “unauthorised”. But I want to work with you to solve the problem – although you have yet to explain what that actually *is*! If, as my original attempt suggested, it is an inability to verify my billing address, I am willing to supply copies (or even originals) of my statements, or whatever other evidence you require to verify the card.

My fiancee and I have been business members of PayPal in good standing for a significant length of time, with tens of thousands of dollars having been processed through us. Yet when I try to set up a simple personal PayPal account, you are unable to assist. This is unacceptable: it gives the impression of a company indifferent to customer satisfaction, and that goes totally against our own standards of practice. If we do not receive a satisfactory explanation, we will certainly have to reconsider our association with you – I am writing from the account associated with my business, to stress the seriousness of this matter.

Paypal’s response?

Your card was denied due to a difference in the address where you receive your monthly billing statements for this credit card and the billing address indicated on your PayPal account. Please check your credit card statement to make sure that the address where you receive your monthly billing statements for this credit card is exactly the same as the address on your account. This includes abbreviations, CAPs, punctuation, etc. Please also note that his declination of your card is not reflective of your credit or credit worthiness.

Can you spell F-O-R-M-L-E-T-T-E-R? Ironically, at the bottom of this response was a footnote: “We at PayPal would like to know how well this response accommodated your request…If this email did not meet your expectations: mailto:didnotmeetexpectations@paypal.com”. Needless to say, my next letter was copied to that address as well…

This is rapidly becoming a complete fiasco. Your email tells me nothing I did not learn the very FIRST TIME I emailed customer services… The email which I sent…follows AGAIN, because your reply above is obviously a stock response, sent without actually bothering to look at my email in any detail, and completely fails to address any of the issues I raised. Please *read* it this time!

You might also want to look and see how many people my fiancee and I have referred to PayPal through the business account detailed above; I think that, given this, we deserve better customer service than a standard email when we try to open a personal account. Once again, I look forward to hearing from you shortly – this time with a proper resolution of the problem.

Okay, so that last paragraph smacks of desperation a little bit. 🙂 But after the usual automated acknowledgement thanking me for my interest, and only three days later:

Thank you for contacting PayPal. We apologize for the delay in responding to your service request. We apologize for not meeting your expectations and for the difficulty you have had in trying to add this credit card.

Unfortunately, because of our security procedures, the website is not accepting the address that you are entering for your credit card. If you have checked your credit card billing statement and you are entering your address exactly the way it is seen on your billing statement and we still are not accepting it, you will need to obtain another card to add to this account. We do apologize for the frustration and inconvenience this is causing you. However, if the system will not accept it, there is nothing we can do.

So, they were suggesting that I should go to all the trouble of applying for and obtaining another credit card, purely to accomodate the deficiencies of their system! How nice of them! I even tried applying from an entirely separate email address – still, no luck. As for their “there is nothing we can do” comment, here are the suggestions I came up with for them:

• 1) Explain why your system is rejecting a valid credit card. I am quite prepared to PROVE that I am supplying the correct address.
• 2) Fix your system so that it works properly.
• 3) Verify the credit card details manually.
• 4) Activate the account manually? I will then transfer in money from the business account and charge my credit card with the amount. Oddly, OUR system – along with Amazon and, it seems, everyone else on the Internet apart from PayPal – is quite willing to accept my card as valid.

To which they replied: “I would suggest you contact your credit card company and see what the correct mailing address would be, to use for a verification.” No: fuck you – I amn’t going to waste any more time trying to work around the inadequacies of your system. So there, for the moment, the matter rests: option 4 is exactly what I did anyway. They keep very quiet about it, but you don’t need a credit card or a bank account to use PayPal, just get someone who does to transfer money across. It thus doesn’t matter whether or not I hear again from PayPal Customer Service (a true oxymoron), but if I do, I’ll post it here.

If anyone else is having PayPal problems, I’d like to hear from you. We are rapidly discovering that it has all the bureaucracy of a bank, with none of the safeguards. On the business side, we have noticed a steady increase in the numbers of people using Billpoint rather than PayPal – if I were you, I would certainly consider keeping as small a balance in there as you can…

It’s not just me who has an appalling opinion of their Customer Service.

Neil from Canada writes: “So I recently had a dealing with a fraudulent seller (purchased a software application that was bogus) on paypal, and when I contacted paypal regarding this they said “Yes, we are aware that you’ve gotten ripped off, but there’s nothing we can do, since the product you purchased is an intangible item. You are going to have to contact your credit card company.”

So I contacted my credit card company and the fraud investigations department investigated and found it a clear case of fraud and charged back the amount. What does Paypal do? They put a whole bunch of limitations on my account (limited my purchase amount to $100, from $1500) and dispute the verdict from the fraud department of my cc. I didn’t really want to be a buyer on Paypal anymore after this anyway but just for shits and giggles I emailed them asking why my account was limited. This was their response:

“Thank you for contacting PayPal with your concern. If a buyer goes outside of PayPal to dispute, we reserve the right to limit the account. This is dependent upon many factors.”

So basically “if a buyer” tries to resolve a dispute through the very means that PayPal in fact suggested since they weren’t going to do anything to help me, they will basically punish me by making sure I can’t buy anything of value anymore.“