Good acting, bad story

Rating: 5/10 (9 February 2006)

This film challenged one of the biggest Hollywood clichés: That if you're talented, determined and hard working enough blah blah blah you'll become a millionaire within a record amount of time and then live happily ever after.
So sometimes s**t happens and people just have bad luck despite all of the above. Point taken.
But in busting one Hollywood cliché the film simply propagated another one: That you can't be happy without being rich and famous.
Life is not as black and white as that. Sure, poverty sucks, but it's not like the ONLY two options in life are either being dirty rich or filthy poor (or whichever way around).
Maggie's desperate all-or-nothing philosophy really irritated me. This film seems to hint that violence is the only way out of poverty. But violence is NOT a way out of poverty, EDUCATION is. Had she been as dogged about learning a trade as she had been about becoming a champion, she would have earned a qualification several times over by the end of the film and been able to lead quite a comfortable middle class life. Boxing may have been her vocation but it's not a secret that to earn a decent living from this sport you run a high risk of becoming a brain damaged wreck.