If Meg Ryan thought her career fightback had been launched by Jane Campion's In The Cut then this release could put it firmly back on the ropes.

Where she had showed some sign of breaking away from the love-struck roles that made her name, this outing - actually made before In The Cut - has her rolling on the canvas.

She tackles the role of real-life ambitious boxing promoter Jackie Kallen, who is credited with being America's first woman to take on the boys at their own game.

In this fictionalised account, she throws off the shackles of being executive secretary to a thankless fight promoter and strikes out on her own.

She bails former drug dealer enforcer Luther Shaw (Epps) out of jail, plucks him out of the ghetto and recruits veteran trainer Felix Reynolds (Dutton) to knock him into shape.

In an unbelievably short length of time, she's making headlines as America's sassiest boxing manageress and the seemingly unstoppable Luther looks set to challenge for the World Middleweight Championship.

This is a bit of a feminist slant on Rocky but stays irredeemably the wrong side of believable with Ryan's mis-cast character little more than one-dimensional.

The dialogue is clogged with crude metaphors not so much mixed but dumped in a blender and ratched up to the max - "he's a polaroid, he's out of the picture."

It also boasts some unintentional howlers. Kallen's disenchanted admirer and sports jock Gavin Reese (Tim Daly) comments:"If you said something, you meant it. When you didn't say something, you meant that too." Eh?

Epps does a pretty decent job in the ring and Dutton invites sympathy as the faithful old-timer but Ryan only really shines when her ego drives a wedge between her and her boxing sensation.

The story plays out pretty much as you expect but by this time the storyline is so punch drunk it would be cruel to allow it to stay in the ring any longer.

Tim Evans