Had me 'til the ending, then I crashed

Rating: Null/10 (30 January 2005)

Eastwood had me hooked until the spinal cord injury. After that, I really did not care about any of the characters, because the movie had turned into a melodramatic cartoon, not a real-life study. Great art always has this quality: you forget you are watching art because you are so absorbed in the experience. And the experience of great art keeps you absorbed, because it rings true - it feels like something real and deep unfolding.
Like "Green Fried Tomatoes" this drama-turned-tear-jerker throws in gratuitous illness or death which comes off feeling false. What's the point at the end, anyhow? As far as I can see, the issue of the morality of euthanasia is secondary. From a dramatic point of view, we want to see how people grow and relate, why they care about each other, and how they resolve their difficulties. Eastwood's character is the old "tough guy with a heart of gold". If someone's been hurt that long, or has such a struggle with his faith, what exactly do we learn from watching him extinguish his little spark of budding love? I do not find his inner darkness compelling at all - there has not been enough love and light shed on it to even care, much less see what's hiding in the corners.
The woman fighter also rings false. Someone that cute and peppy has no friends? No life? No hospital visitors after thousands are chanting her name? Even if she were an obsessed boxer, anyone that isolated would be a lot weirder, not nearly so attractive a personality. (This is not a criticism of Swank, who is absolutely superb, but of the whole story setup) And quadriplegia? There are 10,000 spinal injuries in the US every year. Half are quads. Most are from MVA's and gunshots. Only 9% are from sports, and 2/3 of those are diving injuries. The rest are mostly from skiing and football/rugby. The likelihood of our heroine getting a C1 on C2 from a car crash is about 500 times higher than from getting the injury in the ring. It just rings false and contrived, like an astronaut being hit on the launch pad by a meteorite.
In sum, this strikes me as an interesting character study, that ends by drowning everyone we care about in the bathtub. If I want to be depressed and learn that life stinks, cheaters and crooks win, nice guys lose, you lose or kill everything you love, and faith is no help, I'll go back and re-read Tess of the D'Urbervilles. At least that one had half-decent writing.