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Back Shelf Beauties
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Million Dollar Baby Million Dollar Baby is a critical darling, but I think it might be a little overrated. Much like Sideways, I think Million Dollar Baby is a good movie, but not as great as the hype propelling it to Oscar contender status. Hillary Swank stars as Maggie - a very poor woman who has started a boxing career. She has won a few matches, and shows some promise, but needs real, professional help to elevate herself to the championship level. Maggie wants veteran trainer and gym owner Frankie (Clint Eastwood) to help her, but he's reluctant to take on a woman boxer. Finally, he relents, and the two form a special relationship that could take her all the way to the top. Will Maggie win the championship? Million Dollar Baby has a simple premise made better by studying the relationships between the characters, but it takes too wild of a turn towards the end for my taste. Writer Paul Haggis (based on stories from F.X. Toole AKA Jerry Boyd) takes the typical boxing clichés and makes them meaningful by allowing us to feel for the people involved in the quest. He gives us a full sense of Maggie's tragic background and burning desire, while also showing us what baggage Frankie has carried to this stage of his life and some of his regrets. While it is an overall strong script, some sub-plots were given too much attention, while others left me dangling and wondering about significant details I wish were revealed. In particular, I was turned off by the character Danger (Jay Baruchel) - a mentally challenged kid who dreams of fighting, but is never allowed to get in the ring. He is a complete waste of time as Danger never figures prominently in the movie, but we have to watch several scenes with him. Also, Haggis takes a perfectly wonderful boxing tale and makes it into something else about two-thirds of the way through. This sudden change in story takes us too far from the boxing and into more controversial subject matter better suited for a different movie, where he can make his statement more appropriately. As director, Eastwood takes it slow and allows each character to establish a special bond with each other, even though this slows down the movie just a touch too much. While I often enjoy Eastwood's signature calm and welcoming pace, Million Dollar Baby moves a bit too slow, mainly because it is loaded down with the extra subplots. Also, I like Eastwood's music, but it is too subdued for a boxing movie. Million Dollar Baby needs something more urgent and rocking. He does a wonderful job capturing the brutality of boxing and contrasting it to the gentleness and loving nature of each character, especially the father-daughter type relationship between Frankie and Maggie. Million Dollar Baby looks great, feels real and gets you emotionally involved, which is what you want Eastwood to do. His job is made easier by some of the best actors working today. Oscar winner Swank is looking at another nomination here, but not for the part of the performance most will find most shocking and touching (that ending portion of the film I don't want to mention, but didn't like). She makes Maggie into a wonderful, charming spitfire, full of determination and inspirational for striving to live out a dream in the face of insurmountable odds. She doesn't overdo the accent, and never lets her character take an overly melodramatic or mawkish turn, which some less talented actresses would have done to elicit cheap emotion from the audience. Eastwood is very good as the troubled trainer with a dark past, but I have to wonder why he and Morgan Freeman, playing his trusted right hand man Eddie, have decided all elderly boxing guys have to have a gravelly voice. It's just kind of funny to see these two extremely talented actors try to speak throughout the movie as if they have sipped Comet before starting the scene. Is this to reflect their difficult lives? Were their voices damaged by years of smoke filled arenas and screaming instructions to their trainees? Did they both watch Burgess Meredith in Rocky and decide this was the way to go? Beats me, but Eastwood is darn good throughout the film and gives Frankie a spark of life needed to make the audience like him. Million Dollar Baby is a good boxing movie, not so great with the big twist, and another solid work from a Hollywood legend. 2 ½ Waffles (Out Of 4) Copyright 2004 - WaffleMovies.com
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