I recently watched Million Dollar Baby and Glory Road, both sports moveis, at least they use sports to move the main plot forward.
Million Dollar Baby is a boxing movie on the outside, but really more about a relationship between two people, one, Clint Eastwood, whose daughter hates him, and the other, Hillary Swank, whose father has died. They form a father - daughter relationship that grows throughout the movie. At one point in the movie I thought that is was fantastic, then later I thought it was pretty good, then by the end of it I was sure it was a very good movie with an ending that makes you really think.
As a plus it has voice-over by Morgan Freeman who is always fantastic.
Glory Road is the true story about the Texas Western basketball team in 1965 - 66 whose coach wanted to win and recruited black players and had three black players starting in the South at a time when there wasn't a single black starter in the whole SEC.
They played the most important college basketball game of all time in 1966 against Kentucky in the National Championship game in which the Texas Western (now UTEP) team decided that only the black players would play in the whole game. Even though I knew the ending of the movie already it still is an excellent story. That game was the sole reason that Southern schools started more seriously recruiting black players as starters and not as token bench players.
I would also recommend finding the book Glory Road, written by Don Haskins the coach, I know I'm going to.
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3 comments:
Glory Road was certainly one of the all time greatest sports movies. I'll want to see it more than once.
Regarding Million Dollar Baby--it wasn't a sports movie. It was a movie about euthanasia. And with no referent to God, the Bible or anything eternal, I find it to be a horrible, dangerous (albeit *very* well produced and with powerful acting, which is saying a lot for Eastwood) piece of propoganda for those who would take the end of life decisions away from where they belong and take away any reference to what life and the soul is from the decision.
There are big questions surrounding end of life issues, especially where costs come in to it--but this movie provides answers bankrupt of any godliness or thought to God's answers to those questions and so I found it not thought provoking but dangerous.
Actually, it was thought provoking for you now wasn't it? You don't have to agree with what the creator of the story is trying to say in order for a movie to be thought provoking :)
It was thought provoking for me in that I was realizing that it is easy to be against euthanasia from a distance, yet when you are close to the person suffering so much, it becomes a bit harder, and those people need to not just be screamed at to do the right thing but supported and cared for as they struggle through a very difficult time.
One more thing: You are forgetting what the priest told him when Eastwood talks to the priest about this, he says "Forget about Heaven or Hell, if you do this you will be lost."
I think there was a clear message that this was not good and I think that was part of the tragedy. Eastwood is never able to go back to his life, instead he spends his days alone in a dinor, searching for the time when he was happy.
But then again, I think Mr. Brooks gets fair comeuppance in the end too.
I had forgotten about the priest's comment, and you're right it was thought provoking.
And you're also right that euthanasia is a different issue when real people are involved.
Just to be clear, I have no problem with a Christian signing a "Do Not Resusitate" order (DNR) at a later stage in life as a statement of "don't spend millions of dollars keeping me out of heaven". I haven't signed one at this point because at my age (and responsibility level) it's not as simple as wanting to go Home--I have a family with young ones.
But for a court or a government to decide to end a life is wrong, and there is a difference between not resusitating someone and killing them and I think the default position is life and we have to be careful.
We're probably not too far off in this regard--but I still think the movie is potentially dangerous propaganda. :)
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