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Review

Million Dollar Baby

Director

Clint Eastwood

Year

2004

Rating

Reviewed by

José Ruiloba a.k.a. Morris

Review date

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

The wait is over. After having almost every critic in the country fall head over heels for Clint Eastwood’s latest, those of us, mere mortals, were left with only clocks counting the minutes until we could see this supposedly extraordinary movie. So the wait is over. And my heart is full again.

Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) is an old trainer who owns a muddled boxing gym and runs it with the help of former boxer and alumni Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris (Morgan Freeman), who even has a small room in that place, where he lives. One day an aspiring boxer, Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), comes in looking for Frankie to train her. He is not interested, mainly because she is a woman and because she is rather old for the sport. But Maggie persists and stays there.

Million Dollar Baby is based upon a collection of short stories written by F.X. Toole. Eastwood saw greatness in the material and quietly shot his movie without much help from production company Warner Bros. He also opted for a slow roll-out in theaters, giving the movie its time to breath and grow on people. And it’s rather a funny coincidence, since that’s just how his movie actually plays.

The movie is nothing more than the tale of three lonely individuals and the bonds they form with each other. At its core you could say it is a boxing movie, but believe me, boxing serves merely as an excuse to tell an extraordinary story about redemption, guilt, perseverance, family and friendship. Paul Haggis’ screenplay is in no rush to tell its story. We get three-dimensional characters that grow on us rather slowly, but whose stories are immersed in our feelings faster than we thought. And it’s in the details that the movie creates these fascinating individuals, whether showing Frankie receiving letters from his estranged daughter or showing him praying at night, or whether having Frankie and Eddie have a conversation about socks, or whether showing Maggie visiting her family or learning she doesn’t care about a television. And yet we never feel like we’re being manipulated, but on the other hand, we feel like we know these people. And therein lies some of its greatness.

It also helps that the movie flows effortlessly from start to finish. Clint’s impeccable direction has a lot to do with it, but the screenplay and Morgan Freeman’s pitch-perfect voice-over are also part of why it works so well. And that’s not to mention Joel Cox’s editing, which brings excitement to the boxing sequences without going for an over-the-top approach, but also serves the story well in the quieter, more intimate scenes. And since it’s time to praise the team behind the technical aspects of the movie, I’d also like to mention Tom Stern’s photography and Clint’s perfectly suitable score.

By now most of you have heard that there is a rather abrupt plot development in the third act of the movie that changes everything. I won’t spoil it for you but I’m going to do my best to talk about it without saying what actually happens. That said, if you don’t want even a hint, jump to the next paragraph now (something I actually recommend if you haven’t seen the movie). If you’re still with me, I’d just like to say that the movie is not greater because of what happens at the end, but is great because of the whole. I actually felt absolutely intrigued by all the time the movie spent mostly on boxing. I think it is on par with Raging Bull at that, albeit in a different way. The dialogue seems like it came directly from heaven, using metaphors for life and explaining the characters’ motivations without preaching at all. But then something happens and we realize Clint was preparing us for it all the way. The entire movie feels like a tragedy without us really knowing why. And all I’m going to say is that you should see the movie from the point of view of the characters, not yours. To generalize is pointless, because this is a movie about these three individuals and the point they’ve come in their lives. It makes us reflect upon the power of life and death, of the fragility of one’s existence, and the things we might be able to do, or not do for that matter, when faced with certain circumstances.

Performances range from the perfect to the uber-perfect, something that actually doesn’t exist, therein making my point a bit clearer. Clint Eastwood delivers the performance of a lifetime as a troubled individual disguised as to not let anyone break that shell. But then Maggie comes and it’s a different story, as the wonderful scene in the car after they’ve visited her family shows in a heart-breaking manner. Hilary Swank, on the other hand, proves that her Oscar was not a fluke, with a performance both dignified and temperamental, physical yet overly internal, intense yet fragile at its core. And Morgan Freeman does not rely on showy gimmicks to prove he’s in complete control of his craft, while also delivering what has to be one of the best voice-over works ever.

A movie of quiet resonance, that’ll stay with you forever...

“Girly, tough ain’t enough.”

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Other reviews of Million Dollar Baby (2004): Groucho