Hard hitting, emotionally wrenching

Rating: Null/10 (26 December 2018)

I really like this Clint Eastwood film. Besides directing, producing, and performing in "Million Dollar Baby," Eastwood also did the music which was simply well-integrated and perfectly composed to match and quietly enhance the plot progression, the mood, and the reaction of the characters. This is a gutsy film, gritty in emotions. It can be a tear-jerker yet not at all sentimental. It tells it like it is - the down to earth hard living of boxing (the theme being a 'crutch'), while the crux of the story concentrates on three main characters (each with haunting past): Eastwood as Frank the weathered boxing trainer, Hilary Swank as Maggie the enthusiastic spark in this whirl of boxing energy, and Morgan Freeman as "Scrap" - besides being the voice-over narrator, provided the bridging catalyst as the cool and caring mainstay to both Frank and Maggie. There are sprinkles of wit and humor here and there - that's how life is: making up of laughter and smiles occasionally in the midst of challenges and struggles, joys and disappointments, hesitation and reinforcement of faith, plucking up courage to take that risk, and mishaps nevertheless happen. There is "whose life is it anyway" dilemma - the confrontation of death, to be or not to be.