Just A Few Words

Rating: 8/10 (21 March 2006)

This is a great film to see once. Acting by cast is always in the moment. Feelings evoked are operatic in scale, and humanely humble. Narration is authoritative, precise, and penetrating. The stories, by F.X. Toole, on which the film is based, richly reveal the true grit of human nature. The boxing is as good as that in Cinderella Man. That is good.
There three major characters in this film. Freeman, as Scrap, doubles as the narrator. Whenever he narrates, his voice brings authority, precision, and penetration to each and every word.
Eastwood, as Frankie, doubles as director, and writes much of the haunting score.
Swank, as Maggie, has to deal with a character not quite as finely-drawn as the heroine of Girl Fight, but she, like Eastwood, brings pathos to many scenes that require "doing nothing, very well." She reaches peaks of performance she aimed for in Boys Don't Cry. She brings authenticity to the role of Maggie, the poor girl struggling hard to overcome poverty.
They all earned Oscars for their work.
Some of the dialog in Million Dollar Baby is terse, telling, and subtly beautiful. For example, Scrap tells Frankie that people die every day thinking they never got their shot. It is a short speech, but worthy of the line of poetry about people leading lives of quiet desperation. It should remain in the living language for quite some time.
The film may suffer, however, from the rash decision by director Clint Eastwood, to shoot from what was essentially screen writer Paul Haggis' rough draft. On repeat viewing, some of the longer scenes that evoke true empathy the first time seem to drag. The whole work then becomes clunky and manipulative.
On the DVD, the bonus features are great!