Saw "Million Dollar Baby" and if you haven't seen it, let me warn you there's no baby in it and certainly not a baby that costs (or is worth) a million dollars. This is a movie about a woman boxer, and it's a pretty sad movie from the get go because you see how much Clint Eastwood aged since the days when he was wearing a poncho and shooting Mexicans. It starts out predictably enough--a young woman wants to be trained to box, and of course Clint is all "arrgh, women don't box, get off my lawn!" and before long he takes her under his wing and learns that her fambly totally sucks so he becomes more fatherly towards her. At one point she's saying "my fambly's on welfare, I work in a diner, if I don't have boxing I have nothing" and rather than pointing out that maybe with a GED or a union job in a factory she might be able to do all right, Clint is all "okay, lady boxing, thing of the future!" Long story short, she turns out to be really good and appears to have a promising career.
WARNING--SPOILERS!
Right up until she gets punched in a fight and lands her head on a chair that old man Clint left laying around! Whoops! Hey Clint, this is why you don't leave chairs in the ring! Of course, this paralyzes her and Clint blames himself for letting her get into the big fight. He also should have blamed himself for the chair, but his buddy--Morgan Freeman--doesn't point this out since that would be tasteless. The worthless fambly of course shows up to try and get money from their paralyzed daughter, and she's all "up yours, fambly" and so they leave and Clint sees that she's trying to kill herself since of course being paralyzed means no more boxing. That probably would have been a good time to point out that many paralyzed people can lead enriching lives, and since she was an up and coming boxer she might have had a compelling story to tell which could have gotten her rich off of book and movie rights, and of course with stem cells these days they're finding all sorts of ways to cure spinal injuries. But instead, Clint decides he can't bear to see her like that, and he finishes her off which teaches a valuable lesson--don't trust a crazy old man to watch a hospital patient! What kind of hospital is that, anyway?
Envelopes – Essential Buyers Manuals
6 years ago
Might I point out that film review and telling the whole dang story are two very different things.
ReplyDeleteAlso, feel free to use **SPOILER ALERT** if you're going to share the end with us.
My assumption due to the hype surrounding the Oscars was that the ending had been well known--though perhaps I shouldn't have assumed that. I'll insert a "spoiler alert."
ReplyDelete