A brilliant but flawed film, simply fell to melodrama in the last third

Rating: Null/10 (28 February 2005)

I go to movies to collect gems, films to be viewed and enjoyed repeatedly over a lifetime. This is as good a personal standard for rating films as any. I am a big fan of Eastwood. I have seen his Unforgiven (not exactly a cheery movie) 11 times and enjoy it every time). Up to the fateful moment in Million Dollar Baby, I was thinking, what luck, this is really brilliant in so many ways, here another magnificent film, with all the elements of drama and humour, remarkable photography and on and on. My cup of tea! And then, 2/3 through and suddenly, there being no real hint of what was to follow (though it is remarkable how easy in hindsight some folks will now imagine them!) wham bam and the film became a self indulgent melodrama.
Would I willingly see my worst nightmare over and over again? Is there a real justification for this turn of events? Beyond "it was in the short story on which the film was based" or "life is tragic sometimes" or some other evasion (I can hardly explain here the extent to which much of what passes as film criticism is misguided)? A movie is a place to get lost in another world, it is not a place I go to feel depressed because someone decided to take some depressing and melodramatic route for no really good reason. It is not that I demand a happy ending, it is that I don't think the bleakest of endings was justified in this particular film.
First it was not made clear if the hero won or lost the actual fight. It looked from later remarks she lost or at least did not win. This is the first nonsense that began the terrible slide. The fouling boxer had been repeatedly warned, it was after the bell went and so on. Eastwood then goes to mawkish melodrama, even the issue of euthanasia gets into the act... Why the hell? A camera over a person who has lost all? To linger over this? A short story is very different from a feature length film. What works in the one does not necessarily work in the other. It needs a big justification (rarely satisfied) to go over 1.5 hrs. The film simply took an arbitrarily unnecessary direction from the millions of possibilities available after that foul attack. The issues of redemption, triumph, ambition, struggle, outsider, luck, talent, fate all could have been better and more satisfyingly handled in other ways in the last third.
OK, to be brief, what do I want? I want that she wins the fight and this be made clear, as was realistic, maybe loses a leg in the ensuing trauma, but recovers from the coma and there be a sense of triumph to compensate for the loss of her youthful athleticism and the "only thing she ever felt good about, boxing". She from a trailer park had done something really big and lived to enjoy it. Why not, why tell the bleaker and hopeless story of her not getting any satisfaction from her magnificent effort and spirit? Oh, she did get that feeling? If you believe that, you would believe almost anything. Imagine the bitter pill of paralysis not overwhelming such a feeling. Eastwood owed it to the human spirit to give her better. I am sorry, I can't help feeling he killed her off so awfully to self-indulge and give vent to an one man's guilt and despair and sense of bleakness...
Unless there is some compelling reason otherwise (and do not suppose that the actual film is the compelling reason), some hope, some satisfaction, not just a withering trailing off into despair and failure. Don't know about you folks, but I was bitterly disappointed at the thought of a gem slipping from my grasp (Unforgiven is not exactly a happy ending, but it was not a downer.) How could I sit and enjoy Million Dollar Baby thoroughly right through over and over? I won't be able to. I beg Eastwood to rewrite and shorten the last third for me (and to do a bit more editing before while at it). Please support me and we will raise some money to help him, he can carry the rest, it was his fault after all..).