Against All Odds...

Rating: 9/10 (22 January 2005)

It took me awhile to get into "Million Dollar Baby." Like all of Eastwood's latter day helmed films, it's snail-paced, darkly lit to the point of annoyance, and at times deafeningly quiet. I thought I had paid to see an underdog triumphs story, a rote boxing pic about an old dog of a trainer (Eastwood) reluctantly teaching a down-and-out youngster (Hillary Swank-amazing here and finally delivering on the promise of her breakthrough performance in "Boys Don't Cry"). The intimate details of boxing and using the sport as life metaphor are done well here, but nothing special.
Then, about three quarters of the way through the film, it takes a turn I was not aware it would take, and I was blindsided, and then treated to a bearing of Eastwood's soul as an actor and a director, as a man and an artist...an honest and unflinching tribute to the life and philosophies of the noble outsider, the person living by their own set of morals and values, the person who does what is right even when it flies in the face of standard practices and laws. In the shadows of the tragedy that the last quarter of the film depicts, we get treated to Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, and Swank bearing all, and giving heartbreaking and devastating performances that haunted me long afterwords. Say what you will about Eastwood as a director (he's usually overrated) and as an actor (he usually plays himself), but he gives us a blazing look here into his perspective of the world, and it is both tragic and beautiful to watch in "Million Dollar Baby."