Million Dollar Baby (2004)

It is no idle exaggeration to say that one doesn't, by and large, remember the women in Clint Eastwood films. They may be girlfriends or troublemakers, but they are seldom more than adjuncts decorating the core drama of masculine aggression, vengeance, and redemption. So when Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), a feisty 30ish diner waitress with a toothy bright smile and no discernible boxing talent, begins to work out at the quaintly dilapidated Los Angeles gym run by Frankie Dunn (Eastwood), and then pesters the crusty, scowling ringside veteran to manage her, I braced myself for Eastwood's The Karate Kid, Part V. But Million Dollar Baby, which Eastwood directed from screenwriter Paul Haggis' adaptation of the hard-hitting boxing-world stories of F.X. Toole, turns out to be a movie of tough excitement and surprise, even grace. It may be a classically staged tale of an underdog's triumph, but each scene is packed with authentic feeling, and if you think you know where Million Dollar Baby is headed — have no fear, you don't.

Frankie, a vintage Eastwood loner, with close-cropped white hair that evokes Paul Newman's and a rasp so scratchy and deep it seems to emanate from his soul, started out as a ''cut man,'' the member of a boxing team who patches up fighters' ripped and bloody faces so that they can go back to the ring for more punishment. His job was to be a healer who brings the pain. In the years since, Frankie has coached many boxers, some successfully, but his flaw as a manager is his lingering reticence: He's so cautious that he holds his fighters back from the dangers — and glories — of a title bout. When his current contender ditches him, the movie does a supple job of dramatizing how he's drawn to give Maggie a few pointers out of pure pity, which turns into habit, which then merges, over time, with his grudging affection for her down-home scrappy spirit. The film scarcely needs its too-corny-to-be-believable subplot about Frankie's estranged daughter, to whom he writes a (returned) letter every week: The chemistry between Eastwood and Swank is touching and spiky and true. It is also gently, unstatedly romantic.

Eastwood turns Frankie's gym into a saddened home of losers and dreamers, with Morgan Freeman, in full world-weary twinkle, as Scrap, Frankie's one-eyed former fighter and only friend. For a while, Million Dollar Baby is a gritty fairy tale in the tradition of Rocky and The Color of Money. Under Frankie's hand, Maggie develops a knockout punch as fearsome as Sugar Ray's, and if her success requires a modest suspension of disbelief, that is more than trumped by the violent bravura of the fight scenes. It may be easier, in the relatively novel world of female boxing, to accept that a fighter could triumph through sheer hunger and will; Swank's performance embodies those qualities with fetching moxie. But then Million Dollar Baby takes a sudden dark turn. Does it work? Let's just say that I never expected Clint Eastwood to do his finest filmmaking in years in a movie that evokes the tender religio-extravagance of Douglas Sirk.

You Might Also Like

• DVD Review Million Dollar Baby (Jul 12, 2005) | Dalton Ross
• Movie Review (Jan 28, 2005)
• Movie Review (Jan 28, 2005)
• Movie Review (Jan 28, 2005)
• Photo Gallery 25 Hall of Fame sports movies (Jun 15, 1988)
• Movie News Memorable film scenes (1981) | Missy Schwartz