Million Dollar Baby

(2004, Clint Eastwood, USA)

rating = 56

Let me preface this review by adamantly (and exuberantly) stating how much I hate sports movies - hate, hate, hate 'em.   Okay, maybe hate is too strong of a word - how about strongly dislike or am completely bored with or have no fond recollections of ?   Most sports movies for me fall into the "mediocre" category (A League of Their Own, Seabiscuit, Bull Durham, Tin Cup, Major League, Field of Dreams, Ali, Jerry Maguire, The Bad News Bears) with nary a few feeling like genuine good films (Eight Men Out, The Color of Money) and only one, off-hand, that I would call great - Raging Bull.   Most of the time, sports movies tend to follow a set standard (and highly predictible, sometimes schmaltzy) procedure, usually leading up to a typically unsatisfying conclusion, where everyone is a winner at heart.   At least 2004's Dodgeball made fun of this oh so boring pattern.

With all that introductory babble set forth, it probably doesn't seem like such a bad thing when I give Million Dollar Baby a mere 56 (out of 100) rating - not bad for a film that is stuck inside one of the least tantalizing genres.   Then again, stuck is probably its most favourable attribute, as well as the best way to describe Clint Eastwood's latest gut-reactionary, Bull/Moose Party motion picture.   Million Dollar Baby ends up not really being a sports movie, but instead plays out like a unconventional character-driven film about people's inabilities to forgive their own past sins that just happens to be "stuck" in the middle of a very conventional rags-to-almost-riches boxing tale.

Eastwood has always been a meat & potatoes kinda guy, and this film is exactly that - but maybe with a little too much gravy poured on.   I have never been of the mindset that Eastwood is this great unsung Auteur, although he is a more than capable Filmmaker.   Here, like in the much superior Mystic River, he shows an unconventional way of making a very conventional picture, and it pays off for at least the first two-thirds of the film.   Clich'ed in many spots, but this gut-wrenching tough guy (tough girl?) melodrama is pulled off by Hilary Swank, proving that she wasn't just a one-hit wunderkind, Morgan Freeman, who is great as always (what a journeyman he is) and even Eastwood himself, in what is probably his best performance to date.   The last half hour or so begins to weigh itself down and seems to drag unto eternity, but the rest is worth the price of admission.