Eastwood's 2nd Best

Rating: 9/10 (15 August 2006)

Eastwood plays Frankie Dunn, a long-in-the-tooth boxing manager and trainer who is too timid to allow his pupils to pursue the championship. As soon as Dunn loses his last protégé, along comes Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank, in her second Best Actress Oscar victory) into his gym, determined to be Dunn's next and first female boxer. After some nudging from his gym's janitor/companion and the film's narrator Eddie Dupris (Morgan Freeman, winning his first Oscar for a sub par performance), Dunn reluctantly takes young Maggie under his wing and finds the best fighter he's ever helped. From this point, I can't say too much more due to a major plot twist, but the film as a whole is a perfect example of the typical formula for a Shakespearean drama. Once again, my favorite scene is because of Eastwood's performance, about 15-20 minutes from the end, when the tough Dunn breaks down into tears in front of his priest, desperate for a perfect solution he ain't gonna get. Half a star is held back thanks to a pile of clichés like Maggie's pit bull of a final opponent, the bully of the gym getting his at the end, and Freeman narrating (sooo Shawshank). Besides that, holy McCuishle! If anything at all propels M$B into classics territory, it's the second act.