Eastwood plays a veteran boxing trainer who has devoted his life to the ring and has precious little to show for it.

Rating: 9/10 (8 July 2010)

A veteran boxing coach (Clint Eastwood) reluctantly takes a plucky waitress (Hilary Swank) under his wing, and trains her until tragedy strikes. The film won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Million Dollar Baby is a creaky, cantankerous melodrama that often feels like a round-up of Hollywood (and specifically Hollywood Irish) clichés from pictures of the 1930s and 1940s; you're meant to be distracted from the film's patronising, if not entirely contemptuous, attitude towards the lower classes by a talking-point plot twist, but even here director Eastwood pulls a lukewarm potato out of the fire only to smother it with kid oven gloves. Swank alone merits praise: her strenuously lank hair is the truest thing in the picture.