Cheap Manipulative Direction Blinds Audiences to Horrible Acting, Writing

Rating: 4/10 (20 December 2005)

Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) is a "cut man" who manages a gym with the help of his friend, Scrap (Morgan Freeman), a former fighter who now is blind in one eye and lives in the gym in addition to working as the janitor. Scrap narrates the story of Frankie and Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) and as the movie begins, Maggie approaches Frankie after a fight, hoping that he'll agree to become her manager. Frankie refuses because she is a girl and too old to begin fighting. None of this matters to Maggie, though, who is determined to rise above her trailer-trash background and become a champion. Without any prior training, she joins Frankie's gym and practices their every day.
As the story moves on, Scrap takes sympathy on Maggie and teaches her a few tricks about how to hit a punching bag. She displays some talent and Frankie reluctantly decides to become her manager. The two form a bond as Maggie begins winning fights and it becomes clear that their relationship moves well beyond the ring and into the realm of a surrogate family. Frankie starts to occupy the place of her dead father and Maggie fills in for Frankie's estranged daughter.
This is, more or less, how the first half of the film plays out. There are some major flaws with the film so far, most notably Eastwood's performance. Trying to present Frankie as a tough guy, he hoarsens his voice and furrows his brow only to deliver one of the most one-note performances in his entire career. Even more infuriating, though, is the lack of understanding Eastwood displays for Frankie. I find it interesting when a character who attends Mass daily is unable to cross himself correctly before his nightly prayers. Another irritating element of Frankie's character is the story of his daughter. We are kept in the dark about why his daughter refuses to speak with him, no doubt because the filmmakers want us to draw our own conclusion. The backstory is far too important to Frankie for us to be kept from us. Suppose he abused her as a child or was an illegitimate father who didn't know she existed until late in life. These different scenarios have massive repercussions on him and his relationship with Maggie.
But it isn't just Eastwood's acting that fails to deliver. Morgan Freeman is also awful. His line readings are so difficult to understand that I spent most of my time trying to determine whether he is acting or impersonating a vacuum cleaner. On the rare occasion when Scrap's narration is actually decipherable, it comes off as pointlessly poetic--suggesting that screenwriter Paul Haggis, adapting from F.X. Toole's "Rope Burns," is unaware of the fact that Scrap is an uneducated man living in a gym. The pair of bad performances just adds to the preposterous string of victories Maggie racks up. Really, why should I believe that a woman that has received only a couple months worth of training is going to slaughter better trained, younger athletes?
Yet, despite these flaws, Hilary Swank's sincere turn almost makes the first hour worth viewing. Swank does a magnificent job of conveying a determined fighter, who has no disillusionments about how miserable her life will be if she doesn't succeed as a boxer. In fact, there are two scenes that are especially effective. The first is when Scrap teaches Maggie how to work a punching bag, the second is on her birthday when Frankie starts to train her. Not only does Swank deliver a fine performance, but also numerous technical aspects of the production are impressive. Tom Stern's cinematography uses shadows to great effect and Henry Bumstead's production design delivers an elegant setting.
The film quickly moves from being flawed to being reprehensible. How so many people can look at what happens during the second half and think of it as being truthful is beyond me. When the half-blind, sixty-something Scrap walks into a ring and knocks out a vibrant, twenty-something boxer, the scene belongs in a "Three Stooges" movie. Even more irritating is a sequence when Maggie and Frankie visit her family. Her mother and sister are the epitome of backwoods hillbillies. Maggie's attempts at giving her mom a nice house are met with hostility, because it will make it impossible for her mom to cheat the welfare system. Stereotyping of this type is both wrong and unnecessary. The audience is already sympathetic to Maggie, so we don't need to be manipulated any further by her uncaring family. If the Fitzgerald's were black, I can only imagine the outrage that would ensue over the depiction of this family. Fortunately for all involved, everybody likes to take a swipe at "white trash."
Of course there's another plot twist that received much controversy when Michael Medved and Rush Limbaugh revealed it in order to further their own agendas. Numerous people castrated them for revealing the specifics of the plot, but since the twist happens with 40 minutes left in the film, it is only fair to tell people the general path the film takes. I won't reveal the exact nature of the twist, but "Million Dollar Baby" is not a female-"Rocky." Instead, it turns into a euthanasia drama. Fair enough, since it's an important topic and many movies incorporate it into the plot. Yet the exact nature of how it is explored is poorly plotted and unbearably divorced from reality. I feel an obligation not to reveal any spoilers from this section of the film, which limits my ability to fully explain my objections to it. Nonetheless, I can safely relay that Eastwood's direction and Haggis' script do not even attempt to present realistic medical procedures. Not only that, but upon reflection, the decisions made by the characters are not consistent with the rest of their behavior. After years of being one of America's top auteurs, perhaps it is time for Eastwood to hang up his gloves.