DIRECTOR: Clint Eastwood
STUDIO: Warner Bros., Lakeshore Entertainment, Malpaso Productions
RATING: PG-13
WEBSITE: milliondollarbabymovie.warnerbros.com
RELEASE DATE: December 15, 2004
Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Man
REVIEW BY CATHERINE KRUMMEY
Clint Eastwood�s Million Dollar Baby is one of the most poignant films this critic has ever seen. Baby is about a man (Eastwood) who, reluctantly, does whatever it takes to help a woman (Oscar-winner Hilary Swank).
The relationship between the man, Frankie, and the woman, Maggie, is not romantic, but a fill-in father-daughter relationship. Frankie and his daughter don�t speak, and Maggie�s father died when she was a young girl. A love of boxing is what brings these two lonely people together.
Maggie pleads Frankie to be her trainer, but Frankie wants nothing to do with her. Frankie�s former trainee and confidant, played terrifically by Morgan Freeman, gives Maggie a few pointers that seem to impress Frankie, although he doesn�t admit it. Finally, Frankie reluctantly agrees to train Maggie. After training Maggie for about a year, she starts to become a successful fighter and gets the chance to fight the champ. Being overly cautious, Frankie at first turns down the offer, but, after Maggie wins another big fight, he gets a good deal for her to fight the champ.
Eastwood does not only do a great job in directing, but he also gives a gut-wrenchingly powerful performance as the burdened Frankie. Swank, who became famous as The Next Karate Kid and garnered critical praise about 10 years later for her work as the cross-dressing Teena Brandon/Brandon Teena in Boys Don�t Cry, for which she won the Best Actress Oscar, is also terrific in Baby and is very deserving of a second Oscar for her emotional performance as the all-but-abandoned Maggie. Freeman gives a cool, calm and collected supporting performance.
The movie, while it took a little extra time to get into the story, can basically be classified as a surprise hit. Most people, including myself, knew very little or nothing at all about this film until November or December, when the big critics started praising it and its stars� performances.
For most of his acting career, Eastwood has been known for playing the extremely macho characters. In Baby, he almost seems to poke fun at the typecast and play a somewhat-macho character that gets over it when he crosses paths with Maggie.