An initially great movie that jumps the tracks horribly

Rating: 5/10 (12 March 2009)

Million Dollar Baby is really two movies--a fantastic female boxer film and a lousy, downbeat, cheap-ending melodrama.
This movie establishes great characters...Eastwood and Freeman as veteran trainers, Swank as Maggie the boxer. Eastwood is pressured to manage Swank, a female fighter who is poor, aggressive, and feels this is her last chance at fighting--and in doing something, anything with her life. Eastwood is initially resistant in the typical, clichéd "Hollywood Script" sort of way, but that mechanism aside, their relationship turns into a wonderful, non-sexual love friendship.
The female boxing scenes are gritty and realistic. The Maggie character puts her all into it, as she literally has nothing else in her life. We see her beat everyone so badly that her manager has to pay other managers to get their women to fight her.
Up until this point, this is a fantastic movie.
Then, of course, the accident, and Maggie is paralyzed.
And, with the exception of a great scene of Maggie dealing with her useless family, the rest of the film is just awful. Of course, her medical treatments go nowhere, she is facing huge infections, will likely lose her leg, will never be able to move again. All this, mind you, in a few months of hospital stay, so of course, with all this against her, it's time to introduce the euthanasia angle. After all, as the script asserts, this woman can never get back to the life she was slowly starting to appreciate and love, so it makes sense to kill her, admittedly by her own insistence.
This is a tough boxer mentality? This after a few months in a hospital? No hope, no nothing? Are paralyzed people really worth nothing more in life, so let them all die? As well handled, and certainly well meaning, as the ending was, the movie left a bad taste in my mouth. It has nothing to do with ethics, religion or anything else. To me, this movie is like drinking a nice cold glass of ice water on a hot day and as you near the bottom you see a turd in your glass.
It is beyond me how people can rate this film a ten. How more effective, and life affirming might this be, if Maggie were to regain at least some control of her body, and take Eastwood's place after he retires in coaching young female fighters from her wheelchair, adopting some of his techniques? Realizing that while she will never fight again, she has value, she has something to give, and part of her will live on in other fighters? But no, this film is not life-affirming because that's not good Oscar material. It's not hip. Doesn't matter that the ending is implausible and out of character for everyone involved. The movie is about death as an out, and that is how it ends.