Million Dollar Baby (2004)

• Year: 2004
• Released: 28 Jan 2005
• Country: United States
• Adwords: Won 4 Oscars. 67 wins & 86 nominations total
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405159/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/Million_Dollar_Baby
• Metacritics: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/million-dollar-baby
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English, Irish Gaelic
• MPA Rating: PG-13
• Genre: Drama, Sport
• Runtime: 132 min
• Writer: Paul Haggis, F.X. Toole
• Director: Clint Eastwood
• Cast: Hilary Swank, Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman
• Keywords: fight, dying and death, female protagonist, brutality, suicide attempt,

	8.1/10
	86/100
	90% – Critics
	90% – Audience

Million Dollar Baby Storyline

Untrained, inexperienced, and above all, too old, the plucky thirty-one-year-old waitress from Missouri, Maggie Fitzgerald, sets foot in the run-down Hit Pit gym of the silver-haired trainer, Frankie Dunn, bent on becoming a professional boxer. But, the cantankerous, coarse, and overly complicated old-school boxing guru has no intention of teaching girls, let alone taking under his wing yet another nobody who would dump him for another manager. Nevertheless, as her determination, and the subtle persuasion of Dunn’s closest friend, Eddie, get the best of the reluctant mentor, Frankie finally relents, and almost two years later, Maggie finds herself on the fast track to making her dream come true. Little by little, an unbreakable father/daughter bond develops between them, and for the first time in a long while, both Dunn and Maggie have found a purpose in their lives. Is Maggie, indeed, Frankie’s million-dollar baby?

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Million Dollar Baby Movie Reviews

This film made me think…

The SPOILER from “Million Dollar Baby” is perhaps one of the least best-kept secrets in movie history. Most people know what the big twist is in the film, but in case you are one of the few who doesn’t know what it is, I have marked this review as “contains spoiler”–just in case! This film was directed by Clint Eastwood and he also directs–and he has an incredibly great track record over the past couple decades in these capacities–such as “Unforgiven” and “Gran Torino”–so I knew I had to see this film. I am very glad I did…though I must admit it tore me up emotionally watching the movie. This is not a criticism, but actually a complement. That’s right. Too often, movies have nothing to say and don’t take any risks–and this film clearly takes risks and has a lot to say. So, when a film like this gets me crying, it’s not at all a bad thing.

The first 2/3 of the film is a boxing film. Yes, it’s well-acted with Hillary Swank, Morgan Freeman and Eastwood at their best. But, it’s still only a boxing film–a feel-good boxing movie. However, the up and coming boxer (Swank) is unexpectedly paralyzed in the ring-and from then on the film really is at its best and darkest. It asks the poignant questions “is assisted suicide okay?” and “do we have an innate right to die?”–especially in cases where there is no apparent quality of life. It’s an important moral and ethical question that most people avoid and films almost never address–and I am glad they created a scenario where you feel very torn. It’s hard to just categorically say that taking a life in such a situation is immoral–and this moral ambiguity made the film for me. Because of this, unlike most film, it has staying power. I can imagine that thousands or millions of viewers had their beliefs challenged and many were spurred on by this film to have discussions with friends and loved ones about this debate. Few films will provoke you like “Million Dollar Baby”–this, combined with a great script and great acting, make this one of the best films of the decade and I can easily see how it won the Best Picture Oscar.

By the way, it’s not at all a huge criticism, but I felt that the fight scene with the spinal injury could have been handled a bit better. Having the opponent being even more vicious than Clubber Lang from “Rocky III” was a bit silly, as she would have been disqualified about 30 seconds into a real boxing match. It was a bit over the top. But, considering how perfect the film is otherwise, this should be overlooked…except for cinema freaks like myself!

It Doesn’t Get Better Than This

I’m not sure Clint Eastwood shouldn’t have just retired after making Million Dollar Baby. Because films don’t get any better than this or more poignant.

Maybe Clint was influenced by the career of his young co-star Hillary Swank. When Swank got the Oscar for Boys Don’t Cry it was said that it was a pity she reached such a dazzling pinnacle in acting, that it wasn’t possible to top it. She might not have topped it, but she certainly equaled it in Million Dollar Baby in every sense of the word.

Clint is certainly beyond the days of being an action hero, no more Dirty Harrys or the Man With No Name films for him in his seventies. But in playing Frankie Dunn as a senior citizen he’s put a coda on his career with a role that leaves those iconic parts in the dust.

Million Dollar Baby is a generational love story, but not romance, not hardly in that sense. Clint is a lonely old man, alienated from what family he has left which happens to be a daughter and involved in the running of his gym where prize fighters train.

Boxing is integrated now, women do participate against each other to be sure, but it certainly wasn’t so when Eastwood was starting. So it was a fateful day indeed when Maggie Fitzgerald played by Hillary Swank showed up to learn the fine points of pugilism.

I’m sure that Swank took some of the points of character from Brandon Teena in playing Maggie Fitzgerald. It’s not an issue of sexual identity for Swank, but both characters come from this white trash background and both yearn for something more in life. There are dozens of sports stories involving men and women who escaped drab lives through athletic skill. The only difference in Million Dollar Baby is that boxing was not open to women until recently.

To use that phrase from another recent film classic, Swank completes Eastwood. She gives him in the family he’s lost even if it’s ever so briefly and he provides a strong father figure that she lacked in her life.

It all ends so horrifically tragic that I can’t say more, but that it’s here where even the frozen Medusa would thaw out in tears at the powerful performances of Eastwood and Swank.

Million Dollar Baby won four of the seven Oscars it was nominated for in 2004. It won for Best Picture and Best Director for Clint Eastwood and Hillary Swank just as she did for Boys Don’t Cry just blew out the competition for Best Actress. And Morgan Freeman who was Eastwood’s friend and live-in gym manager and trainer for Swank copped a Best Supporting Actor Award. It’s he who narrates Million Dollar Baby, he’s the chronicler of the unfolding tragedy.

I suppose the moral of the story is never settle for mediocrity, always strive for your personal best. Even if it ends bad you haven’t really lived unless you live that way. And family doesn’t necessarily have to have related genes.

This film will be a classic hundreds of years from now. We can all learn some life lessons from Million Dollar Baby.

A depressing experience

I’ve loved the majority of Eastwood’s films as director in the last decade (and consider LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA to be one of the finest war films ever made), but MILLION DOLLAR BABY is a film that left me cold. On the face of it, there’s nothing much to dislike: it’s expertly crafted with Eastwood’s eye for technical detail and cast members delivering Oscar-winning performances.

But, nonetheless, something didn’t gel with me. It may be that the rags-to-riches boxing story is far too familiar, having been done decades ago in the much lower-budgeted ROCKY, a film with a simpler plot and worse actors that was far more powerful, thanks to its raw heartfelt emotion. In contrast, MILLION DOLLAR BABY is ice-cold, and something feels very staged about it.

Swank is believable as the female boxer, but once again I felt no empathy for her character (Swank, like Cate Blanchett, never seems to get the audience on side). Eastwood and Freeman feel tired, both just giving yet another variation on already familiar character types. The pacing is slow and the running time overlong, making the storyline feel stretched out; the last hour or so is particularly painful to watch.

I enjoy movies because they’re entertaining and I often prefer escapism over highbrow intellectualism. Despite the professionalism of its cast and crew, MILLION DOLLAR BABY forgets to be entertaining, and I disliked it for that reason.