Hilary Swank

Million Dollar Baby – Clint Eastwood

Don’t be put off. This superb film is not light, trite or funny as it’s silly title suggests. Rope Burns, its working title, would have been fine. More importantly: boxing is its context, not its subject. Even if you hate boxing, you can still enjoy this movie. And it is worth the gamble.

Patti Smith – Trampin’, Brian Wilson – Smile, Buffy Sainte Marie – Coincidence and Likely Stories; and for me Martin Scorcese – Age of Innocence. After years of developing and refining their talent, some creative people come up with a work of mature, consummate authority, that fully expresses those skills. After several close calls, including the over-praised Unforgiven and Mystic River, Clint Eastwood finally makes it with MDB. Typically, the film is lean, sparse, perfectly honed and powerfully directed in every sense. There is not a single shot in MDB that is not edited to a heartbeat. Editor Joel Cox, has worked with Eastwood on every film he has made and I doubt there is a better editing team currently working in Hollywood.

The perfect, mood matched, original music was also written by Eastwood and literally underscores the action with subtlety. Claustrophobically set, dark and broodingly lit, there is not a wasted word or a jarring note in an intense, moving story of love, friendship, and courage. Its unsentimental fatalism is also pure Eastwood, certainly the Director, and perhaps the man.

And so – the acting. Primarily a three-hander, Morgan Freeman and certainly Eastwood himself have never been better, and that’s saying something given their impressive track records. No uneasy ‘against age’ acting here, both inhabit their seniority with truthful honesty rigorously tested by implacable, unwavering close-ups. This is critical for the depth and resonance of the relationship between Eastwood’s Frankie, reluctant trainer to Hilary Swank’s feisty Maggie not to be undermined by a queasy sexuality.

Swank has the biggest challenge of course: her sinewy, honed body recalling Linda Hamilton in The Terminator, this is no ‘girl boxer’ tongue-in-cheek parody. Swank gives trailer trash Maggie, a convincing strength of character and gutsiness, in and out of the ring. The three-way relationships between these credible characters, are essential to the success in avoiding mawkishness and sentimentality in later parts of the film.

By instinct, I think Eastwood would have ended the film 5 minutes earlier, but the coda does round the film off tidily and unlike the Unforgiven, does not subvert what went before. This is a moving, thoughtful film with great authority, in which all the key cinematic skills a put seamlessly to the service of telling a good story with clarity and absolute directness. Don’t miss it.

(February 2004)

Filed under: 4 stars, Action, Clint Eastwood, Drama, General, Hollywood, Uncategorized