The little things made this a bit disappointing

Rating: Null/10 (1 February 2005)

I have to say, that while this is a good movie, it could have been so much better. This is because of the little things. First of all, the voice-over narration. This is always a cheap way of moving the plot forward, and in this movie it's no less cheap. It's also very distracting. Do we need to hear Morgan Freeman narrate a story again? Didn't we already get that in Shawshank? At least in that movie he wasn't simply pointing out what we already knew.
Second, Clint Eastwood just really didn't act very well. Hilary Swank was very good, and deserves her Oscar nomination, but Clint and Morgan were just their typical selves, and didn't really show anything more than that.
The boxing scenes were fun, and they were compelling. But they didn't make up for the clichés that came later. It was a good movie, but not Oscar material.