Movie Review: Million Dollar Baby (10/10)

I must begin this review by correcting myself for statements made in the last few issues, regarding my top movies of the year and my choices for the Academy Awards. I wrote both of those pieces before seeing the best American movie of the year (A Very Long Engagement still takes my number one slot) and the film that should win the best picture Oscar: Million Dollar Baby.

The film, the newest by Clint Eastwood, is a tour de force in the art of filmmaking. While not Eastwood’s best (that title goes to his Best Picture Winning Western Unforgiven), it is certainly his second greatest.

Million Dollar Baby tells the stories of Frankie (Eastwood), Maggie (Hillary Swank from Boys Don’t Cry) and Scrap (Morgan Freeman), three people with heavy burdens weighing on their shoulders from events in their pasts. Frankie runs a run down gym for boxers in L.A. and trains them there as well. Scrap, a former boxer, is the janitor and Frankie’s best-friend. Maggie is a 31 year-old waitress from Missouri who aspires to become a boxer under Frankie’s tutelage. And that is all that I will say.

What else you will find in Million Dollar Baby is something that you have to find for yourself, but I will tell you it deals with issues of life, death, and facing one’s past. That’s something which sounds overly generic, but Baby is a film that is anything but. The film contains a twist about 2/3 of the way through that makes the film so much more than another boxing movie, but a film that will firmly staple Eastwood as one of the best directors of our time.

That being said, I will warn everyone that they should keep far away from any sort of reviews that give warnings of spoilers for the film, or any conservative writers/public speakers. Million Dollar Baby is a politically charged film, and there are people out in the media who do not care to ruin the film’s plot so they can speak their mind and say that they disagree with the story that Eastwood is trying to tell us. Roger Ebert recently published an article on this very subject, publicly denouncing people like Rush Limbaugh for giving away key plot points so that he may spew his hatred toward all things he disagrees with. Million Dollar Baby is not a film that takes a stance either on the issues it brings up, but instead one that makes the viewer consider what they have seen and draw their own conclusion. Needless to say, this is a film that you will be discussing with your friends for long afterward.

Apart from its plot, the film is wonderfully crafted, too. Eastwood plays with shadows the way other directors play with light. He has characters hidden among strategically placed spaces of darkness, not allowing us to see their faces and the expressions they wear. One scene in particular is when Frankie and Maggie are in a car together and the only light is that of the passing cars and streetlights. There is no special illuminating dashboard light to let us see everything within the vehicle.

This is something which adds to the film’s realism, too. Million Dollar Baby feels more true than most true stories, and is a film that everyone should see as soon as possible. It will make you laugh, cry and, most of all, think. And you will also be rooting for the cast on Oscar night (Eastwood, Swank and Freeman all have nominations for acting), as for Eastwood as director and the film as a whole. If you doubt me, go see the film for yourself, (to use a cliché) it’s a knock-out.