Million Dollar Baby (2004) Review

Unlike Meg Ryan's real-life boxing tale Against the Ropes, which quickly went down for the count in February, Clint's new film gloriously honors the memory of the late Jerry Boyd.

 Still at the top of his game   © Warner Brothers

Like the boxing world that it depicts, Clint Eastwood's 25th directorial effort can only truly be deemed a champ if it matches up convincingly to previous consensus title-holders. And when it comes to the narrative canvas of two wounded souls, one male and one female, quietly brought together by chance rather than for some earth-shaking great purpose, the pedigree of existing drama is formidable, beginning with Fellini's La Strada, Bogdanovich's Paper Moon and Chaplin's City Lights.

The good news is that the acting talent that climbs into the ring for this one is as good as any that has come before: Clint Eastwood, still fit and wiry at age 74, has now clearly overtaken Jack Nicholson as the master of craggy facial expressions; Hilary Swank, after a series of post-Oscar misfires, is a wonderful whirligig of dopey optimism, Irish determination and anachronistic good manners; and Morgan Freeman hasn't been this light on his acting feet since the one-two punch of Unforgiven and The Shawshank Redemption.

What's more, the script marks a bold transition from the small to the big screen for London, Ontario born writer Paul Haggis (EZ Streets, Due South, thirtysomething, etc.), who first optioned longtime fight manager and cut man Jerry Boyd's short stories Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner in 2002, and is now hard at work on Eastwood's next film, Flags of Our Fathers, based on the James Bradley novel about the Battle of Iwo Jima. Boyd, who wrote the stories under the pen name F.X. Toole, died that same year at age 72.

The voice of reason            © Warner Brothers 

Unfortunately, there is still a little bit too much TV blood coursing through Haggis' Canadian veins, leaving room for a number of awkward tonal shifts and minor plot deficiencies. As a result, Million Dollar Baby is a thoroughly satisfying TKO, but not quite the full-fledged cinematic knockout of some of the other entrants in its class, let alone Eastwood's own twilight classic, Mystic River.

In the twelve years that have passed since Eastwood's Best Picture winner Unforgiven, both he and co-star Morgan Freeman have embraced the mantle of utterly endearing grumpy old man. If you can imagine Rocky with two Burgess Meredith's, then you begin to get a sense of the wonderful laugh-out-loud moments essayed on screen between Eastwood's Frankie Dunn and Freeman's Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris. Suffice it to say that socks with holes in them have never been quite so effectively used as a metaphor for a long, hard fought life.

Meanwhile, Hilary Swank suddenly looks poised this awards season to pull off something of a repeat of 1999, when she snuck up on Annette Bening and walloped American Beauty with Boys Don't Cry. If she does indeed race past Bening's marvelous turn in Being Julia again this year, even Mrs. Beatty may not begrudge her the honor.

 Leaves it all in the ring        © Warner Brothers

Her incandescent performance opposite Eastwood is reminiscent in some ways of Julia Roberts's star-making turn in 1991 opposite Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. This is the role that confirms everything we thought about Swank after Boys Don't Cry, as she proves she's got that all-important quality for a Cineplex queen: likeability that reaches across generations.

In the face of such charisma, many will likely forgive Swank for the film's aforementioned narrative fouls: Maggie Fitzgerald's eighteen-month transformation from hungry 31-year-old waitress to world championship boxing contender is never entirely convincing, nor backed up by palpable late night training progress; the lack of any kind of media or regulatory aftermath following her title fight is a vacuum that only makes sense in a bygone, yesteryear era; and the absence of security features and watchful personnel at a certain hospital later on are just a little bit too damn convenient.

Other minor offenses include a film title that belies the sudden midway shift from character study to three-hanky tearjerker, an overreaching use of voiceover narration, and a more technical quibble known as 'jumping the line,' whereby Eastwood doesn't adjust the way he shoots certain back-and-forth scenes between two characters to compensate for the jarring effect of a moving background captured from two disparate camera angles.

Co-star Anthony Mackie    © Warner Brothers

But having said all that, the fact remains that the vibe of a Clint Eastwood film can still provide as much reassuring comfort to an audience as the way one of his Malpaso Productions movie sets can apparently cocoon an actor. He is said to prefer that his actors wear as little makeup as possible; he likes to print mostly first takes; and instead of 'Action' or 'Cut,' Clint leans towards the low-key directive 'OK.'

Ironically, Million Dollar Baby opens today in limited release the day after this year's other great Hollywood attempt at wounded soul cinema, Collateral, was released on DVD. That film also bears the unique stamp of its director, Michael Mann, and does a better job at contemporizing the angst of its two characters, Vincent (Tom Cruise) and Max (Jamie Foxx), whose twisted lives ultimately play out just a few blocks from Million Dollar Baby's downtown L.A. gym.

To put it in perspective, when Eastwood was Cruise's Collateral age - 41 - he starred in the not dissimilar Dirty Harry. So perhaps three decades from now, Cruise will be directing himself, writing his own scores and sparring with a decidedly more wrinkled Denzel. Until then, we'll have to make do with this slightly flawed Eastwood film. It's still better than most of the guff that passes for moviemaking these days, and remains far more invigorating than the recent output of Eastwood's East Coast counterpart, Woody Allen.