My first (and hopefully last) movie review...

So, I usually feel that movie reviews are best left to the pros...seriously, whenever a friend recommends a movie, I nod, smile, and make a mental note to check rotten tomatoes or metacritic to see what actual experts think, so you can take the following with a grain of salt:

Just watched the critically acclaimed, and Oscar nominated movie "Million Dollar Baby". I must say, it left me very, very dissappointed.

Since my explanation is spoiler heavy, it's written in white text, so if you highlight it (by clicking and holding the mouse clicked, then dragging it down the page), you can read it, but if you don't want spoilers, then don't bother!

The cast and the performances were great, and it certainly isn't a "formula" sports movie, but there is a scene/plot twist in the middle of the movie, that was so poorly executed and so untrue to the sport of boxing that the movie completely lost me. Here comes the spoiler section of this review:

The first half of the movie follows the formula of any good sports movie, and does it REALLY well. The rookie fighter, working her way up in the ranks...her reluctant cornerman showing her the ropes...until finally she has the ~~BIG TITLE MATCH~~ with her evil, dirty, German opponent.

In this pivotal fight scene, the movie completely came unglued for me. Early on in the match, the German knocks Hilary Swank down with a cheap shot...as Swank is struggling to get up, the German knocks her down again. That's right, in a fully sanctioned world title fight, there was a knockdown, and rather than going to a neutral corner, at about a 5 count the villain knocks our hero down again. Never seen that in a boxing match. Hmmmm....let's see, realistically if something like this were to happen in a fight, the German character would be DQ'ed, suspended and perhaps not allowed to box again. In the movie she catches a stern warning.

Okay...you're saying to yourself...fair enough, so they blew it a little to make the German out to be a comic book villain, so what?

It gets worse.

The following round is an absolute clustermess of action. They are pushing eachother to the ground, hitting their opponents when they are down, and our hero is scoring countless illegal blows (at the urging of her corner) as apparently the referee is blind. Mercifully the bell rings amd I am left to wonder how on earth the judges scored the round with such frenzied action. (I should have known better than to think it was going to the judges scorecards...)

This is where the movie commits its biggest faux pas of all. After the bell rings to end the round, and the fighters have long since been seperated, Hillary Swank is heading to her corner. As she nears her corner, out of nowhere her German opponent nails her from behind (we're talking 5-10 seconds after the bell). So much time has elapsed after the round, in fact, that her cornerman has actually already got the stool set up in the corner, and when Swank falls she somehow breaks her neck on the stool. This never would have happened for a couple of reasons:

1.) It's illegal - not only in boxing, but there would be an assault law suit
2.) The German was likely ahead or even on the scorecards, so she really didn't have a good reason for this cheap attack.
3.) I've seen late shots in boxing before, but I've never ever seen anything like this...I'm not saying it's impossible...no wait a minute...I'm saying that in a major title fight, with a $1 million dollar purse, nothing like this could EVER HAPPEN!

Anyway, we find out later that Swank lost the fight. WHAT!? Was it a TKO? She couldn't answer the bell for the 4th round, so the German got awarded the match!!?? Huh? I guess the rules of boxing don't apply at all.

It ticks me off because they could have gotten the same result, but done it in a reasonable way...instead they resorted to this absolutely baffling plot twist and it ruined the movie for me.


To be fair, though, this is not a movie about boxing, it's a movie about relationships, and to that end, it's a good one. I just couldn't get over this one scene...and for the rest of the movie, I sat there thinking about how rotten it was. So I guess if your not a boxing fan, or if you think I'm being nitpicky, this may be the movie for you. As for me...big thumbs down!


Sorry about this post, I had to vent...back to regularly scheduled programming. Expect a HUGE NEWS post in the next 3 days.