$500,000 Cliché **

Rating: 6/10 (19 July 2005)

(Spoilers Galore):
Here it is in a nutshell, so don't read if you haven't seen the movie or if you don't want the whole thing revealed to you: Clint Eastwood is a crusty old fight manager whose latest client decides to bail out on him, so when a feisty and determined girly boxer named Maggie (Hillary Swank) shows up at his gym and begs him to train her, he eventually agrees after first putting her off. The girl becomes a really good fighter, knocking all the competition out in the first round, but ultimately meets her match in a dirty-fighting opponent who breaks her neck in the ring and sentences her to a fate at the hospital, where she loses her will to live.
Here we have another one of those non-deserving Best Picture Winners. Let's not get carried away here -- the film is "pretty good" at best, and certainly watchable, but this is nothing more than a retread of so many other boxing and heart-tugging tearjerkers that I'm surprised so many embraced it. All I can guess is that a lot of people never saw the ROCKY films, LOVE STORY or TERMS OF ENDEARMENT. This is a familiar old tale: "Struggling boxer wants to be managed by the best, and an aging old trainer wants one more shot so he hesitantly accepts the challenge. And then, toss in a heaping helping of sudden tragedy from other tearjerkers which causes everyone to pull out their handkerchiefs and Kleenex". The End.
The assets of the film come from the performances of Eastwood, Swank, and also the dependable Morgan Freeman, along with heart and soul and a collection of characters that really relate to one another well. Clint's trainer in particular is given a complex nature, as he goes to church every day to talk to his priest and is haunted by the mistakes he feels he's made during his years. But Swank's Maggie turns out to be a real phony in the end, as she decides that life without one of her limbs is no longer worth living. I don't have a problem with that decision in and of itself, but up to this point we've been hit over the head again and again that Maggie is one tough cookie who never says "no" and doesn't stop fighting. I didn't buy for a minute that she'd give up the real fight of her life when the going really got tough.