February 10, 1999 -- Long after screening "On The Ropes" you are left with lingering thoughts about boxers Tyrene, George, and Noel, and their trainer, Harry Keitt. These are very real people struggling with despair, hanging onto dreams of a better life. Boxing may be their way out of Brooklyn, New York's Bedford-Stuyvesant, the classic urban ghetto, a place of project housing, poverty, crack cocaine, AIDS, and dysfunctional families. Co-Producer-Directors, Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen, filmed for over a year in making this Sundance Film Festival award winner and Oscar nominee for the Feature Documentary category. The filmmakers had obviously gained the trust of the central characters, who speak freely about their feelings and personal struggles. The camera is an accepted companion, observing and listening to moments of intense emotion.

From within the Bed-Stu Boxing Center, we watch as the front window cover raises, letting light into this little neighborhood gym that produced boxing superstars Riddick Bowe and other champions. Harry is beginning his daily routine of training young boxers. But Harry is much more than his apparent vocation. He is a confidant, father figure, and a street-wise friend. He knows. He took the wrong turn himself. Former amateur boxer and sparring partner for Mohammed Ali, Harry served a four-year sentence in Sing Sing and Attica for drug and attempted murder charges. But now, in this film, Harry is a hero, a hero with fears of failure and desires to make it out of Bed-Stu through the success of just one of his young boxers. For welterweight Noel Santiago, Bed-Stuy is more an escape from commitment. His mother was a crack addict, neglecting him for days at a time. He is in the ninth grade for the third time. Does he really want to be a boxer, or is the gym just another excuse to avoid his education? Harry advises him to choose something, anything, and follow it through to completion. It doesn't have to be boxing.

George Walton is the boxer with the least troubled past. He is the most promising boxer for Harry's ticket out of the ghetto. Already an amateur champion, George experiences his first major decisions in becoming a pro fighter and now learns about the bottom line of boxing. The buzzards circle. Greed and manipulation replace loyalty. Harry is left behind. It is a heart-wrenching scene of personal pain for Harry. All he wanted was to be included, to be there when success came. It is the beginning of George's disillusionment with the business world of boxing. Everyone seems to have a piece of the money but him. The taste of betrayal and mistrust consumes him. He is unsure whom to turn to. With few words between he and Harry, he comes back to Bed-Stuy to contemplate his future, a future he once thought was to be "the biggest boxing sensation ever. If you don't have dreams, you've got nightmares."

Tyrene Manson's dreams of boxing do turn into a nightmare. She has survived a divorce, loss of a job, and the death by AIDS of three family members. She is the legal guardian of two young cousins. Their father, Tyrene's uncle (a crack addict) lives with them. Tyrene is brash, but well spoken. Boxing has "given her a reason for living." But a drug bust of their small home results in her arrest. We watch as she prepares for both her trial and her chance at a Golden Gloves championship. These are by far the most compelling scenes in the 90-minute film. I found myself feeling quite indignant of the judicial system's treatment of this young woman. The judge and prosecutor are merciless. The court's decision leaves a very bad taste in your mouth.

Burstein and Morgen have created a film of real drama in a non-fiction mode. There is minimal use of stated questions and no narration. We hear from the individuals within a depressing community, and watch as they reach beyond survival and grasp and hold on dearly to the possibility of their version of the American dream.

At the end, Harry is again outside, raising the window shade, letting the light into Bed-Stuy gym. It's another day. We wonder how he and Tyrene, Noel, and George are doing.

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Mike McElreath can be reached via e-mail as MikeM@uwyo.edu