Say this for the first time Saturday.... an amazing movie! One of the best in years....! It was depressing at the end, but still an incredible picture! Eastwood and Freeman at their best!

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Eastwood and Freeman at their best!

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Watch Unforgiven again, and tell me if you still feel that way. Not to say they were bad in MDB, they were just better in Unforgiven

Unforgiven was kind of boring.

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Agreed!

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Die!

I agree with the original post - good but depressing movie.

POSSIBLE SLIGHT SPOILER




When my 7 year old daughter said that she wanted to be a boxer when she grows up (after seeing the Contender), the wife and I would just chuckle. After we watched this movie, my wife vigorously nipped that idea in the bud.

On a sidenote, I've read a couple of stories recently about the female boxer who player the bear opposite Hillary Swank in the finale fight. In most ways, she is playing herself in the movies. Total scary tough chick.

For example, she dropped a reporter on the red carpet premier night. Her version of the story was essentially; he popped out at her in a fight pose with his fist near her chin so she slugged him in the gut. She stated that, "it felt good when my fist hit his spine." Needless to say the guy dropped like cement and had to be helped away. She was a champion kickboxer and boxer with an extremely high percentage of fights decided by knockout. A very convincing job of casting by Clint.


FWIW, I preferred MDB to Unforgiven, but there is no bad choice between them - those are two great, great movies.

actually thought it was horse**** that he pulled the plug before she had ever seen a doctor for her depression

I actually didn't think it was all that great.

sucked.

Ahhh, I'm glad I got my weekly fix of someone starting a thread about how they saw "Million Dollar Baby" the past weekend.

Oh, and I love the new "Sideways" thread too.

When seeing the movie, I assumed she did see a doctor for depression. Psychiatric assistance is standard of care for new para or quadrapalegics, but describing the different forms of assistance isn't the focus of the movie. This movie is all about the surrogate father-daughter relationship, not end of life issues.

Saw it this weekend along with Hotel Rwanda, seeing them back to back, Million Dollar Baby probably suffers in my estimation. Also saw A Very Long Engagment, good battle set and scenes but otherwise a typical French film and some implausible situations. Did have a good cameo from Jodie Foster, however.

Hotel Rwanda was the best with great performances from the lead guy and his wife, even Nick Nolte was acceptable.

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This movie is all about the surrogate father-daughter relationship, not end of life issues.

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But that's just the problem with it -- end of life issues are more complicated than "pull the plug, Dad", and MDB presented her condition and treatment in the most simplistic, unrealistic terms possible.

I faced end of life decisions with my mom & I interact with patients facing them frequently. They are both very complicated...and surprisingly simple.

MDB did not present them as "pull the plug dad", but neither did the movie focus on the them. The movie focused on 2 people, broken because they did not have a healthy parent-daughter relationship, who developed an unspoken surrogate parental relationship. The extremeness of the end of life scenes brought home the fact that Clint's gruff character was the parent who loved and cared for Swank's - caring for her daily, searching for any medical care or clinical trial that might be able to help her, the family that the medical professionals called when she tried to commit suicide. This was a relationship that grew not because of "sharing feelings", but grew out of a mutual respect for the others ability and character.

In essence, it is an almost prototype for a well done tragic love story with the twist being that it is the love between parent and child versus romantic love. IMO, one of the best aspects of the film is that it did not talk to death what the characters were thinking, feeling, going through. Doing so made the film more honest to me, but it may have left a situation in which all the details surrounding the end of life issues at the end were not explicitly stated.

[This message has been edited by tick (edited 7/26/2005 11:27a).]

One of the most overrated movies ever.

Salty,

ABSOLUTELY CORRECT...watched it last night for the first time waiting for it to get good and then it ended.