Pretty good, but definitely not a best picture.

Rating: 6/10 (8 February 2016)

Boxing seems to be the sport of choice for movies to feature. Team sports like football may have more movies about them and may have a bigger following from fans, but they aren't as personal as boxing is. It's much harder to make an audience feel for a collective football team than for one boxer that gets visibly bruised up and can form extremely personal rivalries. It just comes down to a difference in inspiration. Teams revitalize cities and nations, but individuals inspire individuals.
Hence, our movie here centers on two people that the audience is meant to grow close to over the two hours. Frankie Dunn is a grumpy and unmoving boxing trainer that values his fighters' safety over their potential for accomplishment. Maggie changes him by giving him enough hope for him to let her face competition beyond what he normally lets his trainees face. With Maggie's eventual downfall, Frankie's fears come to life, and it tears him apart throughout the final act. In the end, they both come to realize that Maggie's life has already been lived and that there is no point for her to continue. This comes more from a sense of accomplishment than of hopelessness. I thought it was good that they kept Frankie's fate ambiguous because showing what he did after Maggie's death might have turned off a lot of viewers. With the ambiguous ending, you can decide whether you want to believe that Frankie has changed by allowing himself to take risks with his fighters or whether he is now even more protective of them.
The story does not really focus that much on boxing, devoting more time to things like Maggie's burnout family and Scrap Iron Eddie's (Morgan Freeman) training of the others back at the gym. Most of the training and fighting scenes come in brief montages that are treated with little importance. Even the tragic last match with Billie the Blue Bear only takes about three or four minutes, where scenes like that are usually made much more dramatic and triumphant in most sports movies. In that way, it slightly transcends other sports movies by not giving us the overused and inevitable championship victory that surprises next to nobody.
I didn't think it deserved any of the Oscars it won. Certainly the acting from Freeman, Swank, and Eastwood was noteworthy and deserved an Oscar Nomination. But neither the acting nor the overall script or film deserved superlative recognition. The parts were all well cast and written with more care than is normal for any given movie. The directing was also noticeably good. It's not that any of it was bad, it just wasn't *that* good.
I know I spoiled a lot of things in there, but if you're still wondering whether to watch it, I would say that it's above average for a sports movie and is a lot more about Frankie and Maggie's relationship than about Maggie rising above all odds to become a champion. In my own opinion, it's a little overrated and over-hyped, but not so much that you'll come out of it completely disappointed. Eastwood and Freeman are in their typical places, so it might be okay to let your opinion of them shape your decision of whether to watch it. If you want to just give it a shot, I would re-evaluate after Maggie starts facing people in matches. Overall Rating: 7.7/10.