10 Movie Moments Where You Had No Idea What Was Going To Happen Next

On paper, Million Dollar Baby seemed like a pretty standard issue - albeit well-crafted - sports drama, focused on an underdog amateur boxer, Margaret "Maggie" Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), who strives to become a professional.

For the first two-thirds of the movie that seems totally on the money, but during a fight with an especially dirty opponent, she's sucker-punched after the bell, causing her to fall onto a stool left in the ring, breaking her neck.

Maggie is rendered a quadriplegic who cannot breathe without ventilator assistance, which in a supposedly inspirational boxing movie is quite the narrative brick wall.

Audiences might assume for a scene or two that Maggie could somehow stage a comeback, but that hope quickly evaporates as her condition worsens.

And so, the rest of the film instead chronicles her campaign to die on her own terms, culminating in her trainer Frankie (Clint Eastwood) illegally euthanising her with a shot of adrenaline.

Though director Eastwood took a major gamble on audience's willingness to follow this deeply upsetting narrative thread, it paid off in colossal box office success and four Oscar wins, including Best Picture and Best Director.