Best Picture 2005 Reviews #5: Million Dollar Baby
And here, ladies and gentlemen, right under the wire, in the red corner, weighing in at just a bit over two hours, Clint Eastwood's not-really-about-boxing movie,
Million Dollar Baby, starring Hilary Swank as Maggie, an up-and-coming boxer, Clint Eastwood as Frankie, the man who refused to train her, and Morgan Freeman as Eddie, an old, retired, injured boxer who shames Frankie into training her after all. All proceeds more or less as you expect, until Maggie's fight for the championship title, at which point things occur to make Frankie think that training her was a bad idea after all. Maggie and Eddie remain convinced, though, and eventually Frankie comes around. Look, I don't want to spoil it. There are lots of places you can find out what exactly goes wrong. Suffice it to say it's a lot more like
Unforgiven and
Mystic River than it is like
Rocky.
Everyone says this is the film to beat for Best Picture this year, and after seeing it, I agree: this really is the best film of the year. It shares a common bond with the other Eastwood films above in that its main theme is the moral ambiguity between what's legal and what's conventionally moral and what's truly right, and the story of Maggie's rise and fall is a superior vehicle for the theme. So, A+ for screenplay. Very nice. It's not neat and tidy, of course, but it's like life itself in that way.
On to acting. Look, Clint Eastwood is a fine actor, and he's fine in this role, but the role of a hard-bitten boxing trainer with a shadowy past doesn't really stretch him dramatically. Fortunately, it's not about him -- it's about Hilary Swank's Maggie. Swank makes Maggie's fighting nature clear from start to finish; you have no problem believing she's nothing more than a waitress with a dream and a hell of a left. Excellent work.
The movie has a fair bit of narration. A lot of the time narration doesn't work well, especially the amount that
Million Dollar Baby has, but this time, it's great, because it's Morgan Freeman as Eddie, the old boxer who's already seen it all, in yet another Really Good Acting Job.
The direction, hmm. Here's the thing -- it's heresy, but even though I believe that this film is superior to
The Aviator, I think
The Aviator has superior direction, which would mean that Scorcese actually *deserves* the Best Director Oscar this year in my opinion. The problem with
Million Dollar Baby is that apparently no one in the entire film owns so much as a 100-watt light bulb. It's unrelentingly dark, not only in tone but also in sheer amount of lumens. Yeah, it's a gritty movie about gritty people in a gritty line of business, but still, it made me want to send in the Queer Eye guys and teach them a thing or too about how color can enliven a room.
The Pianist was more cheerfully lit.
But still. Go. See. I'd tell you to enjoy, but it's a heartrending film. But great art really *should* rend one's heart, from time to time, and this is great art. In my opinion, I managed to save the best picture of 2004 for last.
Acting: Yowza for Swank and Freeman, competent for Eastwood.
Direction: If I could see the film, that might help.
Screenplay: What doesn't emotionally kill you will make you stronger.
Overall: Simply put, the best picture of the year. Except maybe for
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
