Bizarre turn for the unnecessary at the end

Rating: 6/10 (28 December 2004)

Most of the comments about this film on IMDb are extremely laudatory. And until the end of Ms. Swank's last match, this film does measure up to all the plaudits. The movie is serious in tone, but it also has innumerable funny moments, and it looks great. The film is truly magical until...
... until the major twist leading to the end comes, and it comes out of nowhere. That's not automatically a bad thing, but in this case it is. The end isn't organic to what we've witnessed preceding it. My friend said it was manipulative, and I agree.
There didn't seem to be any reason to take us where the beginning took us if we were headed where we ended up. What's the point in going so tragic for no real reason? Yes every acting job was flawless, I'm talking about the story here. It was so very odd where it went because there seemed no justification for it to do so. Happy endings are by no means a requirement for a film, but endings that are somehow the narrative extension of what got us there are, and this is far from that.
It's really darn odd.