"I've got nobody but you, Frankie." "Well, you've got me."

Rating: 8/10 (29 July 2013)

This movie just crushes me. I used to be lukewarm about it and say that it consists of one plain bad half and one great half, but I can't really even do that anymore as I started tearing up during the first half already this time around, even if it might have been in anticipation of what was to come. There's still a lot of stuff in it that I don't like; the writing feels very Academy Awards 101 and/or high school essay (in the same way American History X did), Morgan Freeman as the goodhearted narrator and Clint Eastwood as the grumpy protagonist are as cliché as they come, as is the whole premise of a "cut man" who can patch up people but not his own life, and the 10-second boxing matches in general and the East German prostitute opponent in particular are ludicrous. But it's like, when you have hot tears dripping onto your shirt, who cares? In some ways it reminded me of Dancer in the Dark in that you can find a lot of faults with it and question its manipulation but ultimately don't care as it manipulates so well. If Lars von Trier made a boxing movie, this would probably be it. Hilary Swank also fits together with "golden heart" protagonists Björk and Nicole Kidman as someone who is perceived by herself and others as trash, and swiftly gets robbed of whatever good that comes her way.
The catalytic event that separates the two halves of the movie is of course Maggie Fitzgerald's accident and subsequent paralysis. It's a pretty weird decision to take a sports movie and turn it into a discussion piece on euthanasia halfway in, but I think it works quite well. First of all, the narration lays the ground for the second half by symbolically talking about wounds that can't be healed, Secondly, the whole subplot with Danger might be a metaphor for lost causes. There's also the thing about the fighter having to fight outside the ring as well. The film explores the aspects and consequences for both the person on the deathbed and the person next to it, maybe not in any particular depth, but as much as is allowed without feeling overly didactic. And the final punch hits harder than any of the ones in the ring.