Eastwood wins by pulling punches.
Somewhere between Great Films You Really Should Like (
Battleship Potemkin
) and Silly Movies You Guiltily, Secretly Adore (
Jurassic Park
), lie Movies You Like Reluctantly (
The Shawshank Redemption
), sucked into each story because of its simplicity and the strength of its characters. So it feels almost impossible not to fall for
Million Dollar Baby
when it combines all the ingredients of
***image1***
old-fashioned movie spellweaving: a tight, bittersweet screenplay; spot-on performances; and best of all Clint Eastwood's blunt, dark direction.
Frankie Dunn (Eastwood), once "the best cut man around," now owns a boxing club and spends his time writing letters to his estranged daughter and attending mass. He has a comfortably bickering, near-spousal relationship with his janitor, former fighter Eddie "Scrap-Iron" Dupris (Morgan Freeman). Into their gym barges Maggie Fitzgerald, a ferocious 31-year-old specimen of Ozarks tornado-bait determined to be a fighter. She persists despite Dunn's pungent discouragement, waking up at 3:30 am to run, counting out change from waitressing tips to buy her own speed bag and working out in the dark long after after Scrap turns off the lights and locks up. This is her last chance, she tells him; otherwise she might as well go back home and "get a used trailer and buy a deep fryer and some Oreos." When Dunn finally agrees to train her he's surprised and delighted by how quickly she hits her stride-and how thoroughly she knocks out all of her opponents within the first round. Soon Maggie has her shot at the title, but there's a nasty surprise in store for her and her now-devoted manager; try to see the film before aghast friends let slip what transpires.
***image2***
Many if not most of the film's scenes are literally dark, shot unapologetically in Stygian gloom or from behind, showing only profiles or the backs of actors' heads. In the hands of another director this might be sloppiness, but here it's deliberate and canny.
Eastwood's leads give similarly plain, unprettied performances: Hilary Swank manages to grin lopsidedly through her bruises without sacrificing Maggie's hard-won pride, while Morgan Freeman imbues his usual character (the voiceover-observer) with an extra helping of his usual warm intelligent presence. And Eastwood as actor dusts off his harshest, most gravelly voice for the occasion, while Eastwood the composer wrote the film's mild, wistful score. The understated entirety induces stunned agreement with Scrap's boxing advice: "Sometimes the best way to deliver a punch is to step back."
