Good parts but the pieces don't quite fit together

Rating: 6/10 (2 November 2005)

In this drama, Clint Eastwoods character reluctantly becomes the trainer of a lonely woman (Hilary Swank), who is actually too old to become a boxer.
The acting is superb, the characters very interesting, the career and the training of the main character as a boxer is a fantastic and moving story to follow. The production, the music, the pictures are all flawless. This movie is worth watching indeed.
But the movie is uneven and the pieces don't quite fit together. The separate parts are very very good, but they make no sense in the same movie.
Why o why o why did they have to put on a narrator voice, especially as it is Morgan Freeman who tells the story, and we have already heard this exact narrator tone from him in "The Shawshank Redemption". It adds possibly nothing to the story.
I have nothing against the sadness of the ending. But this whole long last part adds so little to the story, it is sad for the sadness sake sometimes. There were so much more to get here, and it could be much much more connected to the story in general. As now, the end almost feels like a separate movie.
There are more unsatisfactory left out pieces. Many touching stories and people are thrown into the story, but too little is known, too little explored and too unconnected to the main story or some theme of the movie, for their story to capture you as they could have.
But overall the movie is good and worth watching.