Shadow Glories (2001)

As a kickboxer, Simon Penn has had quite a dark and checkered past. His brutal win-at-any-cost tactics found an equal in current heavyweight kickboxing champ Eddie "Killer" Kuzinski. When last they met, both were up-and-comers for the heavyweight title. Their vicious fight to the finish was a veritable blood bath. So much so that Penn finally took a hard look into his blackened soul and withdrew from the fight game and the only life he'd ever known. Having thrived on a life of blood and violence cost Penn everything. He sacrificed and abandoned the one true love of his life, his wife Jenny, in his dream of becoming a hero. A price also paid with precious time. Now in his forties, he's awakened to the waste of his violent existence and the brutality of the world in which he's lived. His prime all but past, he desperately needs to find some semblance of substance to embrace in order to make his years have meaning and purpose. So he's come back home and decided to give everything once again, but this time to win back Jenny, rebuild his marriage, plant roots, and give birth to a newly discovered hope of inner peace and family. Penn's also wants to pass on all that he's learned through his baptism by fire in the fight game. Upon returning to his working class roots from years lost on the road, he sets up shop with CJ Keyes, an unconventional and fiery young female martial artist with a dream of becoming a real-life warrior. Buried beneath that dream is the haunting and ever-present horror that she's indeed her father's daughter - a father whose fits of rage eventually caused the brutal death of her fragile but beloved mother. In the school he builds with CJ, Penn teaches his students, especially the children, the irony of all that he's experienced - of learning how to fight so that they never have to. This is a life lesson CJ isn't ready or willing to embrace. She needs to test her mettle, to make certain that no one, no man, will ever be able to beat her like her dad beat her mom. CJ begs Penn to teach her all that he knows about fighting so she can go professional and eventually break the gender barrier to become the best fighter imaginable. And that means fighting a man whose unbeaten record of brutality includes killing two men in the ring - Penn's blood lusting rival, heavyweight champion Killer Kuzinski. A man at the very crossroads of his life, Penn understands CJ all too well. The depth of her passion and commitment in the face of unbeatable odds and even death itself is precisely the road he's traveled and remains haunted by to this day. Even so, he reluctantly agrees to grant CJ's wish in order to help her achieve her goals. But doing so soon becomes a balancing act on a razor's edge between his old life and his new. And the tragic price offered up this time will come at the highest of human costs.