Pure Genius

Rating: 10/10 (6 December 2005)

This is not so much a review of just the excellence of the film but also of the DVD extras that come if you purchase the DVD special edition.
Not only is Million Dollar Baby one of the greats of film, the DVD extras disc is one of the best extras discs which I have seen. Why? Well unlike Peter Jackson's "Rings" epic's extra features, the extras with this DVD don't seek the average moviegoer to understand the concept of storyboarding, nor to be interested in the minutiae of film making. As meritorious as the compilers of the "Rings" DVDs may have been, they could learn much from those who compiled Million Dollar Baby's extras video. We see interviews with not only the major performers in the cast (Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman and Hilary Swank) but also other segments feature the minor but quite influential characters and one other segment features the producer and also the writer of the screenplay.
The film itself? Absolute brilliance. I first loved Eastwood's direction in a passionate sense after seeing Unforgiven. Gone are the panoramic shots which were characteristic of Unforgiven and The Bridges of Madison County. The camera adopts the claustrophobia of the gym and the hospital ward for much of this film and it succeeds wonderfully. Here is a film that well and truly deserved the Academy Awards which it secured. The plot? Why bother? A superb piece of film-making is a superb piece of film-making.
See Million Dollar Baby.