A young man grows up In a mob controlled neighbourhood in Brooklyn. Being half Italian and half Puerto Rican he faces constant challenges. His father is a drunk and his mother is always working which gives him ample time to pound the sand bag. Michael Madsen plays a mob boss who sets up the boy with a trainer played by Danny Glover, seeing potential in him. His mother is killed by a hit and run driver which changes his life. He now strives to be middleweight champion of the world.<br/><br/>They try and make a Rocky meets Goodfellas with mostly unbelievable characters. Alec Baldwin and Madsen do fine but the rest? The story focuses on his growing up and the life around him. The run time is two hours which is too long for this one. Mike Tyson&#39;s cameo was cheesy as he shows up to give the boxer a pep talk, which looks like he was reading off a prompt.

story has potential. But man most of the people in this movie deliver such bad lines and such bad acting its mostly painful. Save your time and watch something else its over 2h. 1h to 1:30 would be more than enough. Hope i save someone from watching this. A mixed blood kid grows up in a tough part of town. A mafia man helps him in his road in boxing. Sounds good right? Nope.Shannen Doherty is terrible, never though she was great but save me from her acting or lack of.Alec Baldwin has a very small part but is bearable. Danny Glover haven&#39;t seen him in a while and he did a reasonable job with what they gave him. Mike Tyson well just nice to see him i guess. William DeMeo does not look like a boxer and for me me seemed always kinda off but had a couple moments.

I really like boxing movies, so when I read the summary and saw the cast I thought this was going to be a pretty good flick...I watched the whole movie, but never really got into it.<br/><br/>The boxing lead didn&#39;t come off as a very good actor and I had a lot of trouble buying Shannen Doherty as the love interest he spent so long pining away for. I&#39;m sure they are close in actual age, but Doherty looks like she&#39;s in her mid 50&#39;s in this movie and she&#39;s not in very good shape, which made the flashbacks to when they younger look kind of weird.<br/><br/>I think the screenplay itself was probably fine, this movie just needed a slightly different cast along with better directing...