One of the most moving films I've ever seen.

Rating: 10/10 (27 February 2005)

I am writing this review on the afternoon of February 27th, a couple hours before the Academy Awards begin, and I really think that the Best Picture category is going to be mostly a contest between The Aviator and Million Dollar Baby, both of which are spectacular films, as are the rest of the nominees (Finding Neverland, Ray, and Sideways, in my order of preference). I caught this movie about a week ago at a theater a block from my house. The one thing that I really like about living in LA is that, especially at Oscar time, just about any movie nominated in any category is bound to still be playing somewhere, regardless of how long ago it was released.
Except Best Animated Short Film, of course. I still think those never play anywhere.
I have a feeling that Mystic River was passed over for the Best Picture award because of too much similarity to Clint Eastwood's outstanding 1999 film True Crime, and I had anticipated something in that general vein with Million Dollar Baby, if only because the appearance of the film is so similar. Eastwood has gone from making westerns to making one exceedingly dark film after another, and in this film he has succeeded like he never has in his storied career.
Eastwood plays Frankie Dunn, the owner of a pretty run-down boxing gym where hopefuls come to work out and get some training from him. It's the kind of gym from which you don't really expect to see many people rise to boxing stardom, so Frankie concentrates hard on one man that he's training, who has a chance at a title bout. It is during this time that Maggie (Hillary Swank) walks into the gym and starts calling him Boss, which he does not appreciate because, as he flatly tells her, "I don't train girls."
Up to this point in the film the plot has not really revealed itself. We know we are watching a movie about boxing that's not really about boxing (a sports movie cliché that Million Dollar Baby brilliantly sidesteps) and that Maggie is more than likely going to turn into the brilliant boxer that Frankie has been looking for. But beyond that the movie could go in a hundred different directions, and it promptly goes exactly where you didn't think it was going to go.
This could very easily have become a quickly forgettable sports film that disappeared into video store obscurity like even the good sports films like Miracle and Mystery, Alaska seem to have done, but by the end of the movie it has gone in such an original direction and given the audience such an emotional workout that, on my way out of the theater I saw people leaning against the handrail. This movie is so powerful that you have to rest after you see it.
Frankly, given how violent some of these sports movies are, especially ones like this, it amazes me that no other ones have gone as far as Million Dollar Baby does. The boxing scenes are thrilling to watch, even providing good comic relief as Maggie consistently knocks girls out in the first round and then looks sheepishly over at Frankie in her corner, who has instructed her not to knock them out so fast because it's getting so no one wants to put their boxer in the ring with her. He ends up having to bribe managers.
The conflict comes from the fact that Maggie is desperate for a title fight. She has come from a trailer in middle America where she worked as a waitress for something like 17 years, and she knew that she would never do anything else until she got herself out of there on her own. Her family certainly was not going to help. My God man, I could not believe those people. She was uneducated and unskilled, she didn't even know how to box but she had the determination and the motivation to learn, and learn she certainly did.
The problem is that one of Frankie's past trainees who managed to get a title fight was Eddie "Scrap-Iron" Dupris (played in the movie by Morgan Freeman), who not only lost the fight but also was knocked blind in one eye. By the end of the movie, by the way, I like to think that Eddie may have considered changing his nickname to Eddie "110" Dupris. Frankie blames himself and he doesn't want to have another fighter injured. An honorable feeling, but it clashes with Maggie's goals, for whom not getting a chance to a title fight means she'll have to go back to being a waitress, which to her is nothing more than waiting to die. The interaction between the three characters is some of the best I've seen in years. And I've seen a lot of movies in years.
I am reminded of Friday Night Lights, which came out in late 2004 and was hailed as the best sports movie ever made, a bold statement that inspired me to eventually watch it. Fairly entertaining movie, but the ludicrous statement that it's the greatest sports movie ever made becomes even more ludicrous if you consider Million Dollar Baby to be a sports movie. This is one of the great films in all of film history. Do NOT miss it.
And with that, it's almost 4 o'clock. I'm going to go up to Hollywood Blvd. and see if I can catch a glimpse of Clint Eastwood.