So lost in agenda, they missed the point

Rating: 2/10 (17 October 2005)

It is a greater disappointment to believe in the ones you love whenever they clearly strive to fail you on purpose.
Eastwood and Freeman have so often revealed magic that I had come to trust them for artistic integrity. Million Dollar Baby destroyed that belief. This film is little more than a wobbly-wheeled vehicle for a man intent on portraying a disconsolate, washed-up, never-quite-made-it human being, (Heartbreak Ridge, The Unforgiven, Space Cowboys) intent on having us feel sorry for him despite the fact he never took the risk to claim his own slice of life, and it fails both as story and as art.
I am disappointed by the clear failure to work the parallel between the ring and the altar. The story's narrator openly defines the relationship between a boxer and her trainer, and we have numerous examples of that relationship at work. We are presented with Frankie's own journey toward spiritual discipline (a journey we all share) and we anticipate the priest's role as an opportunity to develop the parallel. But the writer (?) producer (?) director (?) let it fall flat upon the screen as an empty suit and I for one was disappointed. This was not a story element overlooked, but clearly inserted into the story and then abandoned (because it might add a glimmer of light into the gloom?).
Then, we are given Maggie's unyielding trust in Frankie though never where it originated nor what of anything between them nourishes it; and through to the end, we wait for the reveal that never comes. Instead, we are asked to watch Frankie trash her gift as an ode to his own tragic life. The film offers us not so much the art of story telling as of despair.
That crumbling sound you hear is another bit of Eastwood's audience falling away.