Moving

Rating: Null/10 (16 January 2005)

This bare, emotional movie is the best that Eastwood has ever done in my opinion. For me, it's not because it has a ruthless, touching ending. So many people have written about it better than I can. I loved this movie because of the atmosphere that Eastwood created.
The movie had a lot of stretches. For me, the story line is too fantastical. It's hard to imagine that a prized fighter would train in such a run-down decrepit old gym. Isn't it a coincidence that two exceptional fighters would both come out of the same gym seemingly in the middle of nowhere, white trash America? But this movie was so realistic in its dialog that I forgot about all that. You could smell the sweat in that gym and it had such a homey feel to it, it made you believe that people would spend all day there. This is a character movie with fantastic actors who did it justice. Why isn't anyone talking about giving Morgan Freeman a nomination?