wanted to like this so much, but...it ended up sucking

Rating: Null/10 (18 January 2005)

please don't read this if you want to see the movie and be surprised. Things were going well with the movie up until the "darth vader/rocky" German fighter stuff, this was unnecessary and ridiculous, fighters get hurt without having to resort to a cheating foe, also sorts of questions and intent were raised with this approach that simply didn't need to be raised, further, there were too many changes in tone throughout the movie, fast pace, then slow, buddy picture, bad family picture, surrogate father/surrogate daughter stuff, overly long and empty sick room scenes. I do have to say Morgan freeman and Hilary Swank were great, the rendering of how to treat a quad was good too, as I have some experience with this, but the movie could have been so much more consistent in tone and shorter if they would have trusted their hunches and not reached for obvious didactic explanation or exaggeration. I'm really not sure what the hell you were suppose to think or feel at the end, I'm not really sure the director did either. Strange, because Eastwood got it about perfect in Unforgiven and A Perfect world, but here he has a tin ear, or should I say a glass chin.