Million Dollar Baby

Million Dollar Baby deserves to be the best movie of the year. Now some awards may take it and others may not, but it truly is a deep, personal tale worthy of emulation. Clint Eastwood has excelled in recent years in spinning tales of blue collar characters fighting to improve themselves and their lot in life. Million Dollar Baby is no different. It is a dark and gritty character study of a female boxer, her reluctant trainer, and his sidekick, a former boxer. The film does not shy away from the dirt and the blood and the sweat of the sport which seems to capture the cinematic heart like no other. Million Dollar Baby is a film whose characters stay with you, you ponder their fate well after the closing credits wondering why they made the choices they did and how they will fare in the future.

In my mind there are two types of great movies. The first, and perhaps my favorite, are the highly watchable films. You know the kind, the movies that always end up on TNT on a Sunday afternoon that you turn on at any point and just watch even though you know exactly what will happen. These films usually make great money and win almost no awards. The second kind, and just as deserving are the kind that awards shows generally like. These films are often dark and usually either epic or intimate, nothing in between, and they fall heavily on the shoulders of the characters and the actors who portray them. Million Dollar Baby is one of these other films and deservedly so. The story and its characters seem real and they stay with you long after you’ve left the theater. The plight of these people is something that doesn’t leave you and you are left wondering what happened to them after the story ended and the camera disappeared.

Million Dollar Baby tells the story of Frankie Dunn a crabby old boxing club owner and manager. Much like Jerry Maguire he is managing a big name in boxing who then deserts him just before hitting the big time. Of course here Frankie is not a victim of circumstance and greed; he is a victim of his own past. Having been around the block once or twice Frankie knows what the sport, and indeed life, can do to a boxer so he protects them and himself by being overly cautions and denying them a chance to go for the title. As with anyone this approach gets tiresome for the would-be champ and so he finds another trainer who is willing to take the risks. Morgan Freeman, as club janitor Eddie Dupris, serves as the narrator and voice of conscience for the under spoken Frankie. This is a role that Freeman is all too familiar with since it is very similar to his award nominated performance as Ellis Boyd ‘Red” Redding in The Shawshank Redemption. Eddie sees the path Frankie chooses and speaks to his old friend and cut man about his unwillingness to take risks and his misplaced guilt about occurrences of the past. Eddie has no regrets about the harsh way boxing treated him, he may have lost his eye, but he had the chance to fight to the best of his potential. As Eddie counts it, for someone who has nothing but boxing being as good as you can is all that matters.

Into this precariously balanced and protected world comes Maggie Fitzgerald played with compassion and drive by Hilary Swank. She proceeds to dog Frankie until he agrees to train her as a boxer though training girls is against his natural inclination. Maggie is too old and under trained to begin as a boxer but she exceeds all expectations preparing in a year for what would take many four years or more to accomplish. Frankie describes her as a girl who ‘never forgets that she is one step away from the trailer park’ but Maggie is determined that boxing is her dream and her destiny and that she can excel at it. And she does. Maggie excels to such a point that she wins by knockout in the first round in almost all of her fights. But again Frankie is there to block her title fight aspirations and protect her from her goals. The largest problem I have with Hilary Swank and her work is simply that she needs to take on a wider variety of roles. She is a beautiful woman yet she continues to play tomboy roles at every turn.

Of course at its core this film is about Frankie not Maggie and as with all great films this is not a boxing film, it is a film about people that happens to be set in boxing. Here Frankie eventually must throw away his reservations and allow those he cares about to take their desired actions and live with the consequences whether good or bad. I won’t give away the end of the film but it does take a significant turn near the end that leads it away from boxing and deeper into the realm of human relationships in a real and intimate and poignant way.

If I have one quirk about the film it is that it is too dark. Here I don’t mean plot or motive wise, I mean in the actual cinematography. This is a gritty film and unflattering and dark scenes are a must. There are a lot of down lights especially in the boxing gym scenes but in parts they are so dark that the characters are obscured and the audience has to squint to try to see Clint speaking. Not that this is not a style choice, kind of like the blue grass in The Aviator scenes, but it almost pulls the audience out of what is a gripping yet quiet scene.

And gripping yet quiet is what this film is all about. It is a mirror of life where people work and relate to one another and then for one moment things are wonderful or things are horrible and life changes and then it is quiet again but it is different. People are different and things change and choices have to be made. Clint Eastwood has made a magnificent film which showcases probably his best performance ever. He has also crafted a wonderful film and drawn great performances out of his other actors in delivering a stunning and thought provoking film.