Maudlin Dollar Baby

Rating: Null/10 (2 July 2008)

Where to start. Difficult to relate how much I detested this movie. I think my biggest objection was the flop ending wherein the picture descends into bathos. About 40 minutes from the end the film throws out its anchor as the heroine dies a heroic death, and the film also drops dead. Hard to believe a veteran like Clint Eastwood would allow it to come to a grinding halt, but why not - the picture was handicapped by its inane plot and uninteresting storyline from the beginning. I was misled by all the hype and the big names involved, as I like Morgan Freeman as well as Eastwood. I should have been forewarned by Eastwood's last preposterous Oscar picture, "Unforgiven" (1990). He is starting to show an unattractive tendency to pander to unsophisticated moviegoers, although it could be he's just aging ungracefully as a director.
One of the headlines under the title page here on the website says that Eastwood is going to have another whack at Dirty Harry. We can only hope.