Contact Help Wanted

MILLION DOLLAR BABY – Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank

Fresh off the multiple Academy Award nominee Mystic River, Clint Eastwood has gone on to tackle the ups and downs of the boxing world in Million Dollar Baby. Despite the cheery title, this is not the usual Rocky-esque rags-to-riches story of the determined underdog who inevitably becomes a super-topdog once she (in this case it’s a “she”) puts on her gloves, jumps into the boxing ring, and starts using other women as punching bags. About two-thirds into the film, Million Dollar Baby takes a radical turn toward tragedy that is as unexpected as the rest of the film is predictable.

Once the dust is settled, however, even that last third quickly derails into the same sentimental mush Eastwood and screenwriter Paul Haggis had concocted earlier. Ultimately, this slow-moving, contrived film — which never quite makes up its mind whether boxing is an artful sport or a social disease — is only made tolerable by Hilary Swank’s forceful performance as the steadfast fighter.

Watching Million Dollar Baby, which is chiefly based on one of F. X. Toole’s short stories, I had the impression I was getting two movies for the price of one. The first part of the film is the cliched Hollywood tale about the pursuit of the American Dream (or perhaps more accurately, the escape from the American Nightmare) against tremendous odds. Poor, fatherless Southern waitress Maggie Fitzgerald (Swank) tries to leave behind her trailer-trash background by punching her way to boxing-ring stardom.

To get there, Maggie begs and cajoles reluctant veteran coach Frankie Dunn (Eastwood) to be her guide and mentor. Frankie is a stoic man (has there ever been an emotional Clint Eastwood hero?) who, much to the dismay of the local priest, doesn’t quite grasp the concept of the Holy Trinity, and who for years has been estranged from his daughter. No points for those who guess that Frankie not only ends up coaching Maggie, but that he also becomes her surrogate father. Or for those who guess that Maggie becomes a stellar, unbeatable fighter.

In the later part of the film, we are taken to Disease Movie of the Week Land. The “disease” in this case is tetraplegia, the result of a brain injury that takes place during a fight. (Of course, go-getting, All-American Maggie doesn’t actually lose a fight; her foreign, nasty-looking opponent cheats.) As our heroine lies paralyzed in bed, it becomes obvious that sooner or later she will ask to be relieved of her suffering — sooner rather than later, I hoped. When the inevitable moment arrives, the avid churchgoer Frankie must decide if he will help to terminate the life of the young woman he has grown to love as a daughter. Once again, no points are given to those who guess Frankie’s eventual choice.

Both plot segments found in Million Dollar Baby have been told and retold countless times. In order to make those situations fresh, director Eastwood and screenwriter Haggis needed to add extra layers to the film’s characters, but instead they rely on hoary clichés that date back to film’s infancy. (Admittedly, part of the problem may have been the source material, which I haven’t read.) Among the film’s myriad by-the-book developments are Maggie’s meteoric rise as a fighter, her unlikely bond with Frankie, the pseudo-philosophical narration provided by a sleepy Morgan Freeman (as Frankie’s pal), and, worst of all, the filmmakers’ decision to avoid showing us good guys who carry within them dark shades of gray and bad guys who are more than selfishness and/or cowardice incarnate. Because of the film’s near-absolute either pitch-black or shiny-white view of its characters, most of the acting falls into the trap of caricature, with Maggie’s trashiest-of-the-trash family, in particular, coming across as a living advertisement for the end of all government assistance to the poor.

Eastwood’s raspy-voiced “good guy” must have done something truly awful to his estranged daughter, but we are not told what that was lest he lose our sympathy. In fact, Frankie comes across as your average taciturn but don’t-fuck-with-him movie hero. Looking tired — all those Spaghetti Westerns and violent cop flicks will take their toll on anyone — Eastwood merely goes through the motions. Indeed, both he and Morgan Freeman underplay to the point that I wondered at times if those guys were still breathing. Eastwood’s sole effective moment as an actor comes in a brief sequence at the hospital, when Frankie’s tenderness toward Maggie feels touchingly genuine.

Elsewhere, Million Dollar Baby belongs to Academy Award winner Hilary Swank, who immerses herself in a role with “Oscar” written all over it — the fact that she is once again playing a girl performing “a man’s job,” even if less radically so than in her award-winning work in Boys Don’t Cry, is possibly no coincidence. As proof of Swank’s charisma, I stayed with her throughout all the film’s contrived twists and turns, as she ran the gamut from brave one-round fighter to even braver hospital-bed heroine. Her Maggie may be as unrealistically fearless as she is sexless (too busy punching bags to find time for either boys or girls), but Swank’s puppy-dog eagerness is winning and in spite of great odds (the script, not the character’s poverty or family background) she brings such warmth to her role that Maggie becomes one absurdly tough fighter that is hard to resist.

If only Eastwood and Haggis had been as tough in their depiction of the boxing world. Their wishy-washiness, in fact, is the film’s most damning flaw, for Million Dollar Baby offers much philosophical talk about boxing without ever taking a solid stance on the sport. For instance, Morgan Freeman’s narrator calls it “unnatural” at one point, but because of the way boxers move, not because the sport consists of human beings using one another as punchbags to the delight of greedy bettors and bloodthirsty audiences. Also, Maggie’s belief that she can improve her condition only by using her fists is never questioned — the way, say, any Hollywood movie would moralize if that same disadvantaged woman wanted to use other parts of her body to get ahead.

Sure, we do see some of the ugly fight wounds in closeup and Eastwood (and his sound editors) make those punches sound like bone-breaking cannon explosions, but our heroine is a heroine solely because of what she does in the ring. Maggie’s honesty, loyalty, and drive to succeed only matter because she does succeed — through her fists. She ends up a tetraplegic, of course, but, as Freeman’s narrator explains, she has also been at the top of her game, which is more than most people can say. Surely, it’s all worth it. Or perhaps it isn’t.

 

Comments

Recently Posted

• Golden Globes 2010 Predictions: Best Picture – Comedy or Musical
• Golden Globes 2010 Predictions: Best Picture - Drama
• Noel Clarke's ADULTHOOD on IFC Festival Direct
• Oscar 2010: Documentary Feature Semi-Finalists
• THE FUPLERS: Q&A with Matt Koval
• Yoav Shamir's DEFAMATION Opens in NY/LA
• TCM Classic Film Festival: A STAR IS BORN, METROPOLIS, BREATHLESS, 2001
• FOUR SEASONS LODGE Screenings
• Oscar 2010: Hash Hamilton to Direct Oscar Telecast
• New Czech Films

Most Popular Tags

2008 Oscar 2010 Oscar Academy Awards Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Animation Best Films Books Box Office Brokeback Mountain Censorship Classic Movies Daniel Day-Lewis Documentaries DVDs Film Awards Film Festivals Film Reviews Gay Film Festivals Gay Interest Gay Movies Heath Ledger Helen Mirren Interviews London Film Festival London Film Festival 2009 Los Angeles Screenings Martin Scorsese New York Screenings No Country for Old Men Oscar Movies Photos Political Movies Politics Sex Shorts Silent Films Slumdog Millionaire Sundance Film Festival Trailers Turner Classic Movies


Related Posts

Seattle Film Critics Awards 2004Kansas City Film Critics Awards 2005BAFTA 2005: Nomination IssuesNational Society of Film Critics Awards 2005Central Ohio Film Critics Awards 2005James Berardinelli Interviewed at Cosmoetica