Great film, but still somehow overrated.

Rating: Null/10 (15 March 2005)

There wasn't a whole lot wrong with what the Academy of Arts and Sciences called 2004's best picture, but I wasn't necessarily moved to tears by it--Clint Eastwood has put out better pictures.
"Million Dollar Baby" is the story of Maggie Fitzgerald (Hillary Swank), a thirty-one year-old woman who grew up as trailer park trash with the dreams of being a boxer. She seeks out Frankie (Clint Eastwood), a life-long trainer and cut man who has a particular distaste for training girls. Maggie has been practicing boxing for four years without any training whatsoever, and dilligently courts Frankie to train her. Frankie denies her time and time again, but finally gives in with a combination of embarrassment of her poor skills, and the fact that his former protégé has left him for a manager that will put him in a title fight.
After taking Maggie under his wing, Frankie trains the eager but often disobedient boxer into a top-notch fighter. He still hesitates to take chances and put Maggie at risk, but if movies have taught us anything, it's that without big risk, there is no big payoff. The trainer and the fighter grow closer and closer as Maggie moves up in the ranks, but when Maggie goes up for the title fight, tragedy strikes, and the two are forced to work through it together.
Clint Eastwood has a fondness for character-driven pieces, and he does a good job in this one (as he did in "Mystic River" (2003)). In the extras on the DVD for "Mystic", Eastwood is interviewed and says that he enjoys stories where characters "have to overcome something." I agree that this makes a story more interesting, but there were moments, albeit only a few here and there, where I felt like the whole story was just a bit cliché--a nobody rising up to become something! only to tragically lose it is a theme that's been explored time and time again. Wisely, the story doesn't follow the same old pattern that many of these do, but it's still part of the reason that I viewed the movie as less than perfect.
Many critics have called "Baby" a character piece, which it is--mostly. The film is driven by Frankie's internal struggle with his demons from the past (including a sub-plot reminiscent of Kevin Bacon's character in Mystic--Frankie's daughter returns all his letters, just as Sean's wife in the 2003 release would call him and hang up without saying a word), and Maggie's role as "the fighter" who rises up to become something!--as Scrap (Morgan Freeman) says, "She grew up knowing one thing--she was trash." It is within Maggie though that I found the movie to become a bit less believable. Once she is paralyzed, and things don't look so good for recovery, she asks Frankie to put her out of her misery, and allow her to leave with the memory of all those people in the stands cheering her name. I had a hard time believing that Maggie would just give up and resort to assisted suicide. ("This? From a woman who had to fight for everything she ever got?" I wrote in my notes while watching the film.) Of course, following this storyline allows Eastwood to avoid the tired montage of scenes where Maggie learns to walk again with inspirational pop music playing in the background--I'm not sure which is worse, sacrificing the character for the story, or maintaining the character at the expense of the story.
Also frustrating to me was being beaten over the head with Maggie's hillbilly family. OK, they're ignorant rednecks. I get it. They don't appreciate or believe in Maggie. I get it. They have old-fashioned beliefs and are greedy for Maggie's success which they never helped make happen in the first place. I get it. The whole presence of the family was a bit over-the-top for me.
I'm willing to give Eastwood a bit of artistic license in his use of Scrap as the narrator. Scrap describes events he wasn't present at (the climax of the movie, for example), and in the end we find that Scrap's narration is actually the reading of a letter to Eastwood's daughter, to let her know "what kind of man (he) really is." Forgivable, but still, chinks in the armor of what many critics called "a masterpiece." Don't get me wrong--this was a good movie. It was an example of great storytelling, the acting was very good, it was light in all the right places, the lighting and cinematography was very well-done, it explored a set of characters in such a way that made you believe and care about their story, and it kept my interest. My point is simply that it wasn't film-making perfection, and furthermore, Eastwood has put out better films. (Unforgiven, is the obvious example, and Sean Penn's performance in Mystic River was better than anything I saw in this movie.) Frankly, it's time I grow up and stop expecting the academy to make consistently good decisions--I guess I should have figured that out when "Gladiator" won best picture in 2000. Despite its flaws, "Baby" won awards for Best Picture, Best Actress (Hillary Swank), Best Director (Clint Eastwood), and Best Supporting Actor (Morgan Freeman). I shouldn't be surprised--the film is exactly what the Academy looks for--it's not too challenging, it's emotional, it's a slight twist on an old theme, and it stars actors and a director that we have come to expect good things from.
8.0/10.00 for "Million Dollar Baby".