Is professional boxing a real sport?

Rating: 8/10 (8 May 2005)

Since long time I am convinced of the need to prohibit men professional boxing, so for women it is much more obvious, and this film probably reflects much of our concern about this "sport" managed and ruled often by gangs. I still remember the Tyson-Hollyfield match, where Tyson finished biting Hollyfield's ear, ridiculous and anti sport behavior, but Tyson after sometime started to box again. Professional boxing destroyed several valuable boxers, among them Joe Louis, Kid Gavilan and others. Often you have an invented champion like Benny Parets in the 50s, who at the end was killed in the ring in a match with Emile Griffith. Parets was never a real champion, he was just the bait for a big match with Griffith, who was much better than Parets. Here the film goes around a girl of a very humble origin, with a family nearly illiterate and a bit wild. She wanted to help their relatives working and boxing, but her family wanted all money earned by her without giving any service to her at all. She (Hilary Swank) was persistent in her intentions to become a boxer, and was good under the advice of his trainer (Clint Eastwood), and got nearly all victories in the ring except one. The film plot is interesting in general, but I am asking myself: what happened to that wild woman boxer who did not follow the rules of the fight? The film never said nothing about her final fate, probably she continued behaving herself as she was. In boxing the spectacle is much more important than the human's life, the rules are made to see bloodshed, people falling down after several punches and agonizing. There is no protection to the man, at the end if he/she dies, who cares? These constraints are well shown by the film, which could have gone deeper into this problem, but probably Eastwood preferred to show some insides of this "game". It is not the first film about the problem of professional boxing, but it's the first one including women. Good acting of Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman, in fact both really were well awarded by their acting, Eastwood was also good but a little bit under the level of Swank and Freeman.