Disabled groups condemn Eastwood euthanasia film

[Batgirl]

Clint Eastwood, the Hollywood screen legend, is under fire from disabled groups who say that his latest award-winning film is thinly disguised propaganda for euthanasia.

Eastwood is the director of Million Dollar Baby, a drama about a female boxer described as "Rocky in a sports bra," in which he also stars alongside Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman.

The film went on general release in the United States earlier this month and critics identified it as a leading contender for an Academy Award after Swank and Eastwood won Golden Globes for Best Actress and Best Director.

Ostensibly, the film is about a young boxer who turns to an elderly trainer to take her to the top. Yet audiences have been astonished by an unheralded plot twist in which a leading character becomes crippled in a serious accident and begs to be put to death.

The film's detractors accuse Warner Brothers, the studio that made it, of deliberately concealing the grim ending. A number of religious right-to-life groups are also upset because Eastwood's character is a devout Roman Catholic who attends mass every day.

Debbie Schlussel, a conservative television and radio commentator, described the film as a "million dollar lie" and a "cover story to suck moviegoers in for a nefarious message." She said that the film supported "killing the handicapped, literally putting their lights out".

The National Spinal Cord Injury Association, one of America's most respected organisations for disabled people, accused Eastwood of a "disability vendetta," describing the last scene of the film as a "brilliantly executed attack on life after a spinal cord injury."

Eastwood clashed previously with the charity when he spent $600,000 (£319,500) fighting a legal order to make his Mission Ranch Hotel in Carmel, California, accessible to handicapped people.

Marcia Roth, the association's chief executive, said the star was using the "power of fame and film to perpetuate his view that the lives of people with disabilities are not worth living."

Last week, film critics attending their annual awards ceremony in Chicago were confronted by protesters from Not Dead Yet, an organisation that fights assisted suicide laws. The group was angry about the glowing reviews Million Dollar Baby had received, saying that critics were ignoring the film's underlying message which, it said, "promotes the killing of disabled people as the solution to the `problem' of disability."

Steven Drake, a researcher for Not Dead Yet, said that the film "plays out killing as a romantic fantasy and gives emotional life to the `better dead than disabled' mindset." The film's release comes as the right-to-die debate is hotting up in the US. A new law being considered in California – Eastwood's home state – would allow doctor-assisted suicide.

President Bush has made clear his opposition to euthanasia. Last year, his brother, Jeb, the governor of Florida, intervened in the case of Terry Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman whose parents are fighting her husband's wish to take her off life support.

Marketing for the film in the US has concentrated exclusively on its boxing theme and Eastwood's initial reluctance to take on Swank's character, telling her "tough ain't enough". Few reviews even hint that the film's climax is an assisted suicide.

Another conservative commentator and film critic, Michael Medved, said: "Warner Brothers never tells you the truth about a key plot twist that turns this pedestrian boxing movie into an insufferable manipulative right-to-die movie."

While promoting the film, Eastwood has avoided talking about the issue of euthanasia. In his only comment so far, he told an interviewer: "How people feel about that is up to them. I'm not a pro-euthanasia person and this is a story about a giant dilemma and how one person had to face that."

Eastwood, who has been married twice and has eight children by five women, rarely talks about his own religious beliefs in public.

Unexpected support for the film has come from the Catholic News Service, which reviews all new films from the point of view of the Catholic Church in America.

The reviewer, David DiCerto, said: "The movie's morally problematic end may leave many Catholic viewers feeling emotionally against the ropes."

But he added: "The film is not a polemic in favour of assisted suicide," and, "Given the dire circumstances, our sympathies and humane inclinations may argue in favour of such misguided compassion."

Telegraph