10. Million Dollar Baby (2006)
The marketing people wanted you to think that
Million Dollar Baby was the female version of
Rocky, and for the most part, those marketing people delivered on their promise. It's an underdog story starring the "is she hot/isn't she hot?" actress Hilary Swank, with Clint Eastwood working his grouchy magic as her trainer ("I don't train girls"). You'll see then, that
Million Dollar Baby appears to nicely fall into the sports movie category, because it's a sports movie, and because I like putting things into categories. It's not
quite as simple as that, though. For anyone who merely wanted a movie with the simplicity of a
Rocky installment,
Million Dollar Baby would have shattered their expectations immensely: the plot twist that occurs part-way through the movie, which leaves Swank's plucky fighter as a quadriplegic, throws everything we thought we knew up in the air. It's a harrowing, numbing turn of events - one that left many movie-goers feeling miserable and confused - that transforms
Baby from your regular sports yarn and into a grim drama dealing with subjects like euthanasia and mortality. Boo! Where's the training montage?