Let me start off by saying that I completely understand all of the hate this film is getting, and that's because for the first half of the film I hated it too. For too much of this film, a lot of the characters are just unlikable slobs . . . especially Mel Gibson's character of Bill Long. Also, the story plays out . . . well, it plays out terribly …

Mark Wahlberg is competent here as the eponymous boxer who takes a shine to the young church-going Carmen (Teresa Ruiz). He can't get near her, so he somewhat opportunistically decides to join her church and see if that helps. Thing is, pretty quickly he discovers that there is something to this "God" thing, and decides to try and get himself ordai…