Fine until insincere final reel

Rating: 7/10 (30 July 2005)

Hilary Swank plays Maggie Fitzgerald, a gutsy bundle of spit and verve who wants more than anything in the entire known universe to be a boxing champeen. So she takes her novice skill level to Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood), notable trainer of he-man boxers. Noting that Maggie's not really male, Frankie treats her with a lot of disdain and disrespect, but grudgingly - with the help of his canny janitor/man-at-arms, Scrap (Morgan Freeman) agrees to train Maggie. At least until she can find a manager. Which she never does.
Swank again gets the Oscar nod (she also won for Boys Don't Cry), but this isn't her show at all - it's that of the two old codgers, Eastwood and Freeman. Freeman's excellence finally gets the level of recognition it deserves, as he won an Oscar, too, and Eastwood won for Best Director.
The first three-quarters of the movie is pretty standard little-punk-against-all-the-odds fare, kind of a step or two above The Karate Kid, but along the same lines. Scrap and Frankie impart wisdom both practical and metaphysical to Maggie, who nods and flashes the largest set of teeth this side of a sabre-toothed tiger. Seriously, Hilary should look into getting those things capped or chiseled down, or something. Swank's job is to look innocent and deserving, but still appear skillful and eager to learn more. Eastwood and Freeman just need to look smart and worldly, not to mention world-weary. All succeed in these broad characterizations.
The final quarter of the movie, though, takes us on a sharp left turn away from the norm. I won't give away the plot turn - it's not a twist, just a turn - but it quickly moves the tone of the movie from inspirational to sappy, from Rocky to Lifetime cable movies. As the audience, we're supposed to feel for Maggie, no matter what happens, and that almost works against things here; Maggie Fitzgerald is shown as a saint, quite frankly. Everything she does seems to be right, or at least Well Intentioned, and most people on the planet aren't quite that ethereal.
Still, it's tough not to root for the little dickens. Maggie's feisty and is determined to succeed; no small feat, considering she's scrawny even after a couple years of self-training. She's motivated by having been told how much of a loser she is throughout her life (she's 31 when the movie begins); if she's unsuccessful as a fighter, she has nothing else to do, nowhere else to go. Presumably, anyway. She's waitressing, after all, and does have a job when she begins training with Frankie, so she's really not as bad off as she wants to appear.
The chemistry between the toothy Swank and the toothless Eastwood should have been fantastic - Oscar winners both, of course - but for me their verbal interplay fell flat. I felt like I was watching two people do a cold reading. On the other hand, old pros Eastwood and Freeman played off each other perfectly, for dramatic and comedic effects. Their scenes together - and one gets the impression that Freeman's Scrap Iron wasn't as huge a character in the original version of the script - were flawless and highly enjoyable to watch, sort of like seeing a married couple interact.
As with most athletics-related movies, Million Dollar Baby will try to manipulate you, and it's fairly successful in that arena. However, the final reel of the movie just didn't completely work for me, seeming more like a disease-of-the-week teleplay than an Academy Award-winning movie.