He doesn't train girls.

Rating: 9/10 (14 February 2005)

Let's dispense with the plot synopsis -- IMDb thoughtfully provides one for you. Instead, let's immediately assert that Clint Eastwood is a film master, and his latest, *Million Dollar Baby* (shot in 36 days!), is a masterpiece. I would not have thought it possible for him to follow up *Mystic River* -- perhaps the greatest American movie in a decade -- with another astonishing film, but he has done it. How? one wonders. The man's ongoing mastery is almost dismaying, in the same way that Michelangelo's incessant masterpieces must've disheartened artists who were 60 years younger than himself.
Eastwood is indeed the Michelangelo of today's art, cinema. Young filmmakers 50 or so years younger than Eastwood may want to take note of how the director shapes the script he's given, how he incrementally builds a narrative, how he excises wasted scenes while at the same time keeping things moving along at a leisurely pace, how he introduces developments within his characters whenever the plot demands a new angle on their behavior, how he maintains a consistent visual tone that matches the story's theme, how he includes revealing details that pay off later, how he mingles his tragedy with a sprinkle of wit here and there, and how he can produce a hard-earned emotional impact out of the most standardized narrative material. Watch and learn, kids. Then watch again.
(Vague spoiler follows) If you're feel secure in your dogmas -- religious, philosophical, or otherwise -- then *Million Dollar Baby* is bound to be an upsetting experience for you. The most devastating, artistically sublime scene in the film occurs when Clint's Frankie confronts his priest (who has had to put up with Frankie's annoying theological quizzes each week at Mass) about the circumstances of his beloved boxing protégé, Maggie. Frankie is, for once, seeking real answers: should he fulfill her request or not? What are the moral implications? The priest, horrified at Frankie's raw pain, can only mouth Church dogma before scuttling out of the camera's frame, far away from the unanswerable darkness sitting beside him. The movie has ensured that the priest's answers -- that is to say, moral generalities -- are meaningless within an individual context. THIS is the heart of what the film is about, and it is apparently not sitting well with some of our ideologues. Rush Limbaugh and Michael Medved are rightfully terrified of this movie's message, which is that life's dilemmas usually cannot be easily answered by either Fox News or your local Sunday service. Know-it-alls and other "morality" types are advised to stay far away from this movie. Because, you see, Frankie doesn't train girls . . . and Eastwood doesn't make movies for girls, either. He makes movies for women. And men. In other words, he makes movies for adults.
9 stars out of 10.