Ridiculous ending

I'm surprised at how often the last boxing match is mentioned and discussed - "she should have won, it's unrealistic, she was better". Surely it's clear that this is not a film about boxing. I'm going to get stoned for this but all this talk of winning reminds me of a quote by Sir Anthony Hopkins: "a lot of Americans don't enjoy British humor because British humor is often about failure and Americans are so obsessed with winning, at being best". Well, something like that.

well, hi there. i couldnt stop myself from answering u. it seems that u are overthinking it. i guess u would prefer that maggie had won the box fight and then lived happy ever after, i mean, everyone who watches the movie wants, and thinks that is goin to happen.
but guess what, it doesnt. its like a chock to you. something u could predict, and as a consequence, you cant understand. and thats suppose to, i mean, you have to be hangry with this kind of situation: the girl does everything she can to follow her dream and a german whore comes and ruins it. its a messed up situation, and clint eastwood knows it. he knows its bad, but u cant say it doesnt make sense, you know it does. it can happen.
its a sad sad history, that its obvious you dont agree with the end, but who does? i mean, she deserved the title, not dead.
and! i'm sorry for my bad english. i'm portuguese.

"Here we have a story about a girl, her dream, and her struggle to live out that dream, despite her horrible family, and all the odds being against her, and as she is about to realize even the tiniest portion of that dream: BLAM, you're paralyzed... Why that? To me it seemed like it came TOTALLY out of left-field."

That's LIFE man. Come on. Not everyone is born into a white middle-class neighbourhood. Some people can just never catch a break, deal with it. This movie had the guts to make us feel uncomfortable and make us look at the dark side of life: the fact that, contrary to white America's popular opinion (and no, this is not an insult against Americans, but merely a convenient way of identifying the group in question without going into too many details and footnotes), sometimes there is no hope, sometimes life is terrible, sometimes the good guys (girls) don't always win.

This movie was brave. End of story.

I knew about the ending before I saw it--in fact I avoided watching it for years because I figured it would be depressing.
Well it was! But I had expected the build up to be more positive, and perhaps because I knew what was coming, I found the story to have a sense of doom throughout it. The tone felt mostly grim to me. The first time we see her she is shaded in a window in the dark.

I would say this movie fails when compared to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or Thunderbolt and Lightfoot in that I would rewatch those movies because the journey is more fun, while I dont think it is the case with this film. He is very slow to take her on and we see her struggle quite a bit beforehand. More so than Rocky who had a private life outside of the ring. Even friends(mafia bosses). Nothing here.

So the ending. Well I think it does match the rest of the movie in some ways--he was her trainer. She had to push him to train her. She had to push him to help her do what she wanted (to get out of the world).
She said she had to fight to get into the world and would have to fight to get out of it--that was poignant and pathetic. However, I think there is some disparity between the reality check of the ending and some of the melodramatic characterizations. The stereotypical hillbilly family (that every member of her family was a scumbag with no redeeming qualities at all except maybe her father which I am not sure was redeeming, we dont know if he beat the dog to death or what) and that she seemed to not clue in to it until that final visit when she realized they didnt even watch her boxing match. Come on. She had to have known her family. They were monstrosities. I found that scene rather awkward--especially as she tells Eastwood it wasnt his business and he leaves the room. This is after he has cared for her for god knows how long already. Her family loyalty didnt make sense to me.
I am not sure I could call her a realistic character.
31 and a total loner, not even people she might meet through work, apparently not educated, not athletic enough to train herself at least a little.Or shack up with some athlete to get guidance from--yet she would eat people's left overs.
That is what seemed most out of whack--the way she pathetically was hitting that punching bag with no knowledge at all. She was smart enough to get a house, but kind of stupid in other ways.
She wasnt a realistic person even before the accident happens. Its more of an exercise in Eastwood's directing ability than the screenwriter's.

WHat are you talking about? The ending made perfect sense.

By now others may have expressed this, but I found the ending consistent with the way Eastwood looks at things. He wants to illustrate that motivations and what is deserved need not get their just rewards and have many possible and unexpected outcomes. They may get quite the opposite and that can be tragic. We have a highly motivated "Million Dollar" boxer who makes it almost to a recognized top which results in the worst possible "reward." Her opponent who probably deserved a criminal prosecution doesn't even get noticed afterward.

Did you see the young boxer whom we can look at as almost as ambitious as the female boxer? He differed in that he had no skill at all yet got his chance. Even though he got whipped, he never gave up and came back. We can look at this theme for other characters in the film: Morgan Freeman, even Hillary Swank's family have their ambitions challenged.

Pardon the less than stellar review. It needs a rewrite.

I don't know if this has been mentioned in the tons of responses but you said Eastwood came up with the idea of her dying. He didn't write the movie so don't blame him.







--------------------------------
I did sixty in five minutes once...

You are so right and gave a good example with Mystic River. No matter what arrogant intellectual nonsense and snobbish verbal diarrhoe... the ending is outright ridiculous and stupid. No clue how to end so let's quickly ....But there will always be people with their artsy fartsy mindset looking for meaning in every meaningless thing.