‘Knockout’ series celebrates boxing films: famous and obscure, with both male and female leads

From left, Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman and Hilary Swank in “Million Dollar Baby.”

On the playground, “You fight like a girl” used to be the ultimate insult.

In the ring, “You fight like a woman” may soon become the highest praise.

Years of squabbling sanctioning bodies (and less than charismatic champions) have drained some enthusiasm from what was once this nation’s premier pugilistic sport. Brutal mixed-martial-arts bouts — and clownish wrestling exhibitions — sometime seem more in tune with the mood of our increasingly violent, and needlessly crude, culture.

But it’s a slightly different story when women climb in the ring. Recently, female fighters have provided plenty of powerful grace and muscular excitement at the Olympics. And last November, the streamed Katie Taylor/Amanda Serrano rematch easily eclipsed the ballyhooed main event of Mike Tyson vs. Aaron Paul, in both boxing skill and pure heart.

On July 11, in another breakthrough — and a nostalgic nod to the days before egregiously expensive pay-per-view fights — Netflix will provide a free stream of a historic, all-female lineup from Madison Square Garden, climaxing with a third go-round for Taylor and Serrano. It is an event the streamer is happily cross-promoting with a mini-festival of 10 boxing movies at its Manhattan theater, The Paris — a number of which feature the far-from-gentle-sex.

Robert De Niro in “Raging Bull.”

Of course, “Knockout: A Cinematic Celebration of the Sweet Science” — running July 5-10 — spotlights plenty of old, testosterone-fueled favorites, too. There will be “Rocky” and “Creed,” “Raging Bull” and the Jersey-set “The Hurricane,” as well as the lauded documentary “When We Were Kings,” about the famous “Rumble in the Jungle” between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.

A few other choices dig a little deeper. It will be interesting to see the rarely screened Daniel Day-Lewis film “The Boxer,” an Irish film that mixes fights both personal and political. And it will be a pleasure to encounter “The Set Up” on the big screen; the gritty noir unfolds in real time and stars Robert Ryan, who — as the four-years-straight heavyweight champ at Dartmouth College — knew his way around the ring.

But other films, just as exciting, tell the stories of female contenders.

Best known is 2004’s “Million Dollar Baby,” the Oscar favorite that won awards for Best Picture, Director (Clint Eastwood), Actress (Hilary Swank) and Supporting Actor (Morgan Freeman). Swank bulked up and trained hard for the role, and pro Lucia Rijker — star of the 1999 doc “Shadow Boxers” — brought bloody realism to her part as one of Swank’s opponents. The movie remains a standout among boxing stories, tearjerkers, and films in general.

But it had been beaten to the screen by another female-oriented film screening at The Paris, Karyn Kusama’s “Girlfight.” An indie hit from 2000, Kusama’s film has a definite Jersey edge — Hoboken’s John Sayles and Maggie Renzi stepped up to provide the $1 million budget when an earlier financier dropped out, and Jersey City’s Michelle Rodriguez played the main character. (It was also her first role, nailed on her very first audition.) Rodriguez — who trained at the fabled Gleason’s Gym for the part — holds the screen from the start, her smoldering glare announcing that a fast and furious career was just beginning.

Kali Reis in “Catch the Fair One.”

Also in the Paris mini-fest: “Catch the Fair One” (see trailer below). This action picture slipped by many fans when it opened in 2021 and sort of slips in here, as well; like “On the Waterfront,” it’s not a film about boxing, but about an ex-boxer, and the brutality the ex-boxer survived and still encounters. Real-life pugilist Kali Reis is fiercely real as the heroine, a down-and-out Native American fighter trying to rescue her sex-trafficked kid sister. And the world she moves in — of decrepit Buffalo warehouses, flashy tribal casinos, hot-sheet motels and crime-boss mansions — feels both absolutely new and sadly timeless.

Admitted, boxing movies are often not just reliable entertainments but predictable ones, with even the best following the same template: A slum-kid hero, meddling mobsters, a push to take a dive, the friends and family abandoned on a climb to the top. But the films in this series avoid most of the usual clichés. They revel in the sport’s complications, moral ambiguities, and dramatic face-to-face conflicts.

And then those ones with a female hero add a punch you never saw coming.

The all-female fight card streams live from Madison Square Garden on Netflix at 8 p.m. July 11. For information on “Knockout: A Cinematic Celebration of the Sweet Science,” running July 5-10 at the Paris Theater in New York, visit paristheaternyc.com.