How on earth did this win Best Picture?

Rating: 5/10 (2 March 2005)

Without the hype, Million Dollar Baby would have been a decent if unremarkable little movie. Unfortunately, after all the breathless praise and accolades bestowed on it I can only think of it as yet another overrated Clint Eastwood film and its flaws are made even more glaring.
Good things first: Hilary Swank was absolutely amazing. There's not much depth to her character to be honest; Maggie is defined by her role as a plucky and determined fighter we root for and little else. But Swank gives it all and she's such a believable and unadorned actress that she can't fail melt your heart. As for other leads, Clint Eastwood is solid enough but I can't help thinking that Morgan Freeman's Oscar win is essentially a lifetime achievement award for a performance that doesn't offer you anything you haven't seen from him already. It's not that he's not good - he is - it's just another over-familiar, "wise observer" role that has become Freeman's trademark. He and Eastwood have easy chemistry and some nice scenes together, but the humour in the scenes where their characters discuss powder and socks is overwritten and forced.
By the time I actually got to watch the film I of course have heard everything about the "shocking twist". By the time Maggie gets down to her big Las Vegas fight I was hoping the twist would come soon already because the first hour of the film didn't offer much beyond a serving of by-the-numbers conventions and clichés that made every plot development and character reaction brain-numbingly predictable. There is some good stuff too: the montage of Maggie dispatching her opponents is fun and there are some nice moments between the leads. But, fifteen minutes in, you already know that -of course- Frankie's best fighter is going to abandon him; that -of course- after the obligatory initial animosity Frankie is going to train Maggie because, don't you know, he's got a heart of pure gold under that hard glowering exterior; that -of course- Maggie will miraculously start to win every fight under the sun. My main problem though is not the clichés themselves - no film can completely escape them - but rather the po-faced, humourless portentousness Eastwood presents them with. It's as if the film tries to lift itself above the hokey melodrama by giving its characters solemn fortune-cookie utterances and drenching itself in as many shades of ugly "gritty" green as possible.
Anyways, the twist finally comes and, according to the reviews, here is where the film truly kicks in and you discover why Eastwood was attracted to the story in the first place. Whereas I discovered film kicking into even greater excess of melodrama and shameless emotional manipulation. Of course I was heartbroken for Maggie - but found it incredibly contrived that in a hurry to get to Maggie's suffering the film doesn't deal -at all- with the dirty blow her German opponent lands her and that would surely get her disqualified or cause some outrage. And if Maggie's no-good hillbilly Momma was unlikeable in the first act, here her entire family might as well have worn "we are evil" stamp on their foreheads - describing them as caricatures is paying them a compliment. Giving the audience such easy targets for derision is just a cheap move on the part of the filmmakers.
To be honest, I was very surprised by reactions that accused the film of pushing euthanasia agenda; I thought that the whole thing was so situational and so specific to these particular characters it didn't even occur to me to think that Clint was making some broad statement. I'm not sure how I feel about Maggie's wish to die though - it's easy to believe it in the film because she's conveniently shown to have NO life or any interests outside of the gym. But couldn't she just request to take her off the system, without all that improbable melodrama with needles and Frankie sneaking into hospital with no detection whatsoever? Overall, yet another average tear-jerker praised to heavens for unfathomable reason.