Even his rival, a boxing promoter who wants to handle the most promising son, comes across less as an enemy than as a man with more common sense than Arturo.
Smits is good in this performance--all too good. The movie is earnest and sincere, and an ordeal to watch because there's no arc to his character, and learning and redemption are too little, too late. He's stuck. He keeps making the same mistakes over and over; he starts as a tragic figure and ends as a slow study.
And he inflicts on his kids (and us) that tiresome strategy of the domineering parent who puts on an act of being reasonable, of "only wanting what's best" for his kids, when clearly his own issues are in charge. He even believes himself when he delivers his sanctimonious and self-serving speeches; the kids turn away and we pity them.
The other arc in the film is that of a typical boxing movie. It opens with Arturo losing big in an early fight, and then we see him living in New Mexico with his wife, Rita (Maria Del Mar), who sees him clearly, loves him but puts up with way too much. They have three kids who are put in the ring at such young ages that we didn't know they made boxing gloves that tiny. (I don't even want to think about kids in the "Pee-wee Division.") He pushes them, browbeats them; even one kid's victory gets criticized because his style was wrong. We sense here a portrait of all parents who live through their children, pushing them onto the stage, forcing them into contests they have no taste for, treating them not like kids but like puppets acting out the parents' fantasies.
Flash forward 10 years, and the kids are young men, but their father has learned nothing. They are Sonny (Jon Seda), Jimmy (Clifton Collins Jr.) and Johnny (Ernesto Hernandez). Sonny is the best boxer, but as the oldest, the most driven to squirm from under his father's thumb. Jimmy is resentful and rebellious. Johnny has real promise, and as the youngest is most concerned with pleasing his dad. But the family by this point is twisted and distorted by years of Arturo's bullying, as Rita Ortega looks on helplessly.
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