80
Metascore
13 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100San Francisco ChroniclePeter StackSan Francisco ChroniclePeter StackExceptional, powerful new documentary.
- 90L.A. WeeklyL.A. WeeklyJolts with a quiet intimacy.
- 90SalonCharles TaylorSalonCharles TaylorWalking out of the theater, I felt so bereft that I couldn't speak. And it doesn't hurt any less thinking about the movie now, as I write this.
- 89Austin ChronicleAustin ChronicleThe documentary has no narration, and uses excellent expository camerawork to say things that no narrator could equal.
- 88Boston GlobeBoston GlobeHas the impact of a left-right combination to the chin.
- 80Los Angeles TimesKevin ThomasLos Angeles TimesKevin ThomasIn recording life as it unfolds in the course of a year, On the Ropes not only defies prediction as to its outcome but is in some ways downright confounding...as involving and suspenseful as the best fictional films.
- 75New York PostNew York PostWhat the film lacks in freshness...it makes up for in its sympathetic and compelling portrayal of its subjects.
- 70Village VoiceVillage VoiceBurstein and Morgen take all this in from an unobtrusive middle distance, letting the subjects themselves slowly complicate the profusion of athletic and ghetto-real clichés that fly scattershot in the early going.
- 60Chicago ReaderLisa AlspectorChicago ReaderLisa AlspectorThe material is powerful--one boxer has been accused of a crime and the trial conflicts with a crucial competition--but much of it feels predigested, the themes inadvertently one-dimensional.
- 50San Francisco ExaminerSan Francisco ExaminerThe story of a trainer and three of his boxers trying to break away from the confines of a gym in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Each story is strong, gripping in its own way. But you've heard them all before.