Very close to the bone - classic Hollywood cinema

Rating: 8/10 (16 November 2005)

First of all: "Million Dollar Baby" is not a movie about boxing (neither are "Raging Bull" or "Hurricane", for that matter). Every film needs a setting, and the setting of "Million Dollar Baby" (adapted from several short stories by F. X. Toole) just happens to be the boxing world. Of course, there are a couple of rather violent fight scenes, but, as in all of the truly great 'boxing-movies', these are only a necessary means for telling a story that is about something completely different and much more universal.
In the first scene, which happens to be one of the aforementioned fighting scenes, there is an impressive close-up shot of an open wound  a cut in a boxer's face, close to his eye  that defines the theme for the rest of the film. This is, indeed, a story about open wounds. Frankie (Clint Eastwood), a veteran boxing trainer, was once known as the best cut-man around  an expert in treating such wounds in boxer's faces. Ironically, he lacks expertise when it comes to taking care of his own (psychological) wounds. Some cuts, it is said at one time in the film, are just too deep or too close to the bone.
Frankie lives alone. For some reason his daughter, apparently the only remaining member of his family, has deserted him and returns all of his letters unopened. All he has left is his business, an L.A.-based boxing gym crowded with some real fighters and a whole load of wannabes. His life suddenly changes when his long-time companion and ex-protégé Scrap (Morgan Freeman), who is also the narrator, discovers Maggie (Hillary Swank) among the many seedy characters in the gym. Maggie, a 31-year-old, uneducated, lower working class woman  "trailer trash from the Ozarks", as she puts it herself  wishes to be trained by Frankie and become a professional fighter so she can break the cycle of her unsatisfactory life and support her family. At first Frankie is skeptical; he's opposed to the idea of training a woman, and he obviously doesn't want to be involved in any way with a woman about the age of his daughter. But after a while, persuaded by Maggie and Scrap as well, he agrees and, of course, Maggie becomes one of the most successful fighters worldwide.
In boxing, it is said, the final round is the hardest (that is, of course, unless one of the two fighters gets knocked out before that). The same thing is true for Eastwood's movie, which takes another abrupt turn towards the end, when after a drastic incident Maggie and Frankie's world is turned upside down once more and everything that seemed certain is in question again. It is up to Frankie now to make one more fateful decision.
On the surface "Million Dollar Baby" has all the clichés and stereotypes: the loser who, through a metamorphosis achieved by hard practice, turns into the ultimate success (Maggie); the veteran mentor who has been through almost everything and has a hell of a time coping with all his grief (Frankie); the streetwise, somewhat poetic observer/adviser/narrator  blind in one eye  who serves as a moral authority ("Scrap"); the outright ridiculous and disgusting hillbilly clan (Maggie's family); and even a rather bizarre version of the terrifying, evil foreigner (Billie, the black, ex-prostitute, fighter from East-Berlin, played by real-life boxer Lucia Rijker). It is its frank and modest tone above all(just pay some attention to the sparse use the editors made of music and sound effects) that saves the film from being just another shallow and cheesy affair, and allows viewers take an interest in the characters' development and the outcome of the story, which can be said to raise more questions than it is able to answer.
Essentially, "Million Dollar Baby" is an American story, the first half driven by a lively from-rags-to-riches or you-can-get-it-if-you-really-want mentality (furthered by constantly drawing on certain myths of the boxing world), the second half dominated by an atmosphere of absolute doubt. Clint Eastwood, along with screenwriter Paul Haggis, has created an outstanding piece of classic Hollywood cinema, dialogue-driven and simple in style. Highly recommended, not only for fans of boxing or movies about boxing!