Painfully average?

Rating: 5/10 (16 October 2005)

When "Million Dollar Baby" came out, I didn't care about seeing it. There are many films I don't bother seeing at the cinema, and this was one of them, it just didn't interest me. The hype starts growing, critics are hailing it as a masterpiece, and before long it's picked up 4 Oscars including best picture. So when it comes out on DVD, I decide to rent it, after all, I have nothing to lose.
This is not a terrible film. Unfortunately, it isn't an excellent film either, and would be summed up best by the words 'painfully average'. There is nothing special about it. The story is nothing special, it's the simple sports underdog story we've seen so many times before, it didn't have anything that really pushed it towards anything more than average. I don't understand the big deal with the acting performances in this film, they're nothing special, and the script is average as well.
Every single character is just a walking cliché; Danger could well be one of the most pointless characters ever. We get it, this guy is all about heart but he can't fight to save his life. There was no need for any of his appearances on screen; it was a pointless character trying to put across some sort of message.
The main thing that made me dislike the film was the final 30-40 minutes, in which Eastwood tries to change the direction the film is going, but fails in my opinion. While it sounds as if I hated the film from start to finish, I didn't, it had good pacing and was quite interesting to watch, despite its flaws, up until this point. The final half hour is extremely long-winded, taking ages to reach its obvious conclusion, and failing to generate any sort of reaction with its supposedly tragic ending. It was this section that I really disliked, it went straight for the heartstrings, yet wasn't tragic enough to pull them.
Discussion over the success of "Million Dollar Baby" will continue until long into the future, but in my opinion it was a failure, which plodded along without ever reaching the level of brilliance, ending with a conclusion which missed the mark.