Ponderous, not at all bad.

Rating: 7/10 (12 January 2006)

Clint Eastwood has earned the satisfaction he seems to get out of making leisurely, moody pieces like this, instead of the drive-in kinds of mindless commercial properties he once had to produce to satisfy his bankers. He has enough ambition and talent to do without the orang-utans.
You can tell this is one of his more arty enterprises by the darkness, the shadows, the chiaroscuro. People work out in his gym with all the lights but one turned off so they cast dramatic shadows on the peeling cinder-block walls. We can tell that it's Morgan Freeman lurking in the gloom because a single strip of light falls across his eyes. Even hospital rooms are lighted as if they were the interiors of cathedrals.
The score, by Eastwood, is a simple one. A melancholy falling arpeggio on a guitar or piano, perfectly predictable except for the final note, which hovers in the air for a long moment before resolving the progression.
The theme is not triumph over aimlessness, as in "Rocky," but guilt. Eastwood is Frankie, a fight manager who feels responsible for his pal Morgan Freeman's losing his eye in a bout. The movie begins with Frankie twitting a priest after mass, provoking him into saying the f word. Frankie's been attending mass every Sunday for more than 20 years but the priest can't figure out why because Frankie lies and blasphemes all the time. It isn't until the end of the movie that we realize exactly how guilt-prone Franky is. He's afraid to push his fighters ahead too fast for fear they'll be hurt, the way Freeman was hurt, and so when his best fighters are fully trained they leave him for more aggressive managers. Frankie's final act of mercy involves such a monumental breach of ordinary ethics that the weight of his responsibility now makes it impossible for him to carry on with his previous life. He disappears overnight, without a trace, with leaving a puff of smoke. A minute-long coda tacked on leaves an unnecessary, unrealistic taste of optimism in the mouth, along with some homemade lemon-meringue that's gone slightly off.
It's curious, but as Eastwood has aged he's come to resemble the aging Henry Fonda more than ever -- tall, gangling stiff, slightly kyphotic, his voice changed into a hoary whisper.
His performance is okay, and so is Hilary Swank's. Morgan Freeman narrates and plays an avuncular observer, doing the interpreting for us, filling in the gaps in the narrative, a fine actor. The prize ought to go to Margo Martindale (?) as Swank's redneck selfish unfeeling Mom. What a picture of pure e-vil.
If there's a weakness in the film, that Fitzgerald family is probably the most prominent. The other characters are mostly multidimensional, but not Swank's family members. They're mainly there to illustrate the point that if Swank doesn't box, she has absolutely nothing to live for. It would be a better movie if Swank's family had been more nearly human -- maybe polite and grateful, but not unhappy at her estrangement. As it is, the family is drive-in baggage, though well acted.
The boxing part is a little different from that of "Rocky." Rocky already knows how to box. He just doesn't care. Swank cares a great deal but knows nothing, so the few lessons we see her getting are instructive. (In "Champion", Kirk Douglas didn't know how to box and he didn't care either.) Watching those brutal boxing scenes would have prompted me to wonder what it was like to be beaten to a pulp by a woman, if I didn't already know. They don't show much in the way of either realism or artistry. No blank spots in the bouts. It's either, Pow, right in the snot-locker, or, Whiz, a great big miss. And every fight ends in a knockout. Ah, well. It's not really a movie about boxing anyway.
Another thing might be mentioned. Eastwood has always tried to build a part for an African-American or other minority in his films, starting early with Albert Popwell. But these characters are never condescended to. They're not sentimentalized, ennobled, or otherwise politically corrected. They're treated like anybody else. And Eastwood hasn't been afraid to challenge himself on screen with fine performers either. Here (and elsewhere) he's used Morgan Freeman, than whom there is no finer actor on the screen today. Watch Freeman play the hilarious scene about his day socks and his night socks, while staring distractedly out the window. Eastwood gets extra points for taking risks like that.
This is a tragedy, but a pretty good one.