So emotionally manipulative, and yet...it was so well acted and directed that I liked it. 8/10

Rating: 6/10 (8 February 2005)

The plot, in case you don't know or are too lazy to read the summary above, is about Maggie (Swank), a thirty-something waitress from a "white trash" background who strives against all odds to become a boxer. Her trainer is Frankie Dunn (Eastwood), a cranky old man with a guilty conscience and an unwillingness to take risks. Frankie is initially unwilling to train Maggie, but after she persists, he gives in, and the boxing movie commences, from the training sequences to the matches.
Eastwood is a great director and the three leads (Eastwood, Swank, and Freeman) are wonderful. That cannot be disputed, at least not with a logical argument. Million Dollar Baby is wonderfully filmed (particularly the boxing scenes), and there were a few times when I honestly couldn't take my eyes off the screen. However, it is, in my opinion, not one of the best of 2004, let alone of the best of all time.
The main problem, I guess (at least from my jaded point of view), is that the characters never seem real. "Real characters" are necessary for a movie that strives for an emotional impact via the road of gritty realism, and rarely during Million Dollar Baby did I ever feel that Frankie and Maggie were anything more than movie characters (<---something that I can't say about the characters in Sideways, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or Eastwood's Mystic River). Eastwood and Freeman give great performances, and Swank truly is Oscar-worthy, but their characters' back-stories and lines of dialogue are so obviously doctored, calculated to create maximum tragic potential. If it wasn't handled so well by Eastwood, I probably wouldn't have taken it seriously at all.
This is a movie that goes for the heart rather than the head. Romantic simplicity takes the place of realism, so if you're less hardened than I, you'll probably find it more affecting. Though it's not particularly clever (even with its special twist, which is not as daring or original as you've undoubtedly heard), but its so well acted and directed that its impossible not to feel happy for Maggie when she succeeds or sorry for Maggie when...well, see the movie.
SPOILERS...MY TAKE ON THE TWIST BELOW...SPOILERS. SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS The twist is...........Maggie gets cheapshotted in a fight and ends up paralyzed. The last half hour of the movie is Eastwood and Swank dealing with her paralysis. Yes, this is daring in that it doesn't go for a typical Hollywood happy ending, but may I remind you that there is still such a thing as a Hollywood sad ending. Instead of being a clichéd underdog triumph story, Million Dollar Baby is a traditional tearjerker in the vein of Love Story or Terms of Endearment.
Final take: See it. Its a good movie with some Oscar worthy acting, but it definitely doesn't deserve a Best Picture statue. 8 out of 10.