On the Ropes
WinStar Cinema | Release Date: September 24, 1999 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
80
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 13 Critic Reviews
Positive:
11
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
San Francisco ChroniclePeter Stack
Exceptional, powerful new documentary. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
A sports documentary as gripping, in a different way, as "Hoop Dreams." Read full review
90
L.A. WeeklyDavid Davis
Jolts with a quiet intimacy. Read full review
90
SalonCharles Taylor
Walking 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. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMatt Williams
The documentary has no narration, and uses excellent expository camerawork to say things that no narrator could equal. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeRenee Graham
Has the impact of a left-right combination to the chin. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKevin Thomas
In 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. Read full review
75
New York PostRod Dreher
What the film lacks in freshness...it makes up for in its sympathetic and compelling portrayal of its subjects. Read full review
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerPaula Nechak
Isn't so emotionally powerful as the Oscar-winning "When We Were Kings" but which -- in its more intimate way -- still packs a punch. Read full review
70
Village VoiceGary Dauphin
Burstein 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. Read full review
70
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
Often technically rough, but it's painfully compelling. Read full review
60
Chicago ReaderLisa Alspector
The 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. Read full review
50
San Francisco ExaminerEdvins Beitiks
The 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. Read full review
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