The Movie Room

Million Dollar Baby 2004, directed by Clint Eastwood

Rating: 10/10

Twelve years after Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood directed another Academy Award for Best Picture winning film, and again it starred him and Morgan Freeman, and again it is a rumination on aging. However, while that previous film was a Western, Million Dollar Baby is a sports story about a crotchety old gym owner who reluctantly agrees to take on a female boxer and the plot soon veers into an engaging melodrama.

I love a good melodrama (Douglas Sirk is one of my favorite directors), so the storyline here really grabs my attention. It is pretty clearly divided into three distinct acts, each of which has individual merit but they also all work together really well. The first act is Hilary Swank’s hopeful boxer entering Clint Eastwood’s gym and continually being turned down by him, even as Morgan Freeman’s janitor/handyman/assistant/friend-to-the-owner maneuvers things so that she can slowly break down grumpy Eastwood’s resolve. This act is classic Eastwood—he plays a cranky old man who meets a representative of the new generation and slowly comes to realize that maybe not everything new is so bad. Then the second act is a typical sports story, as Eastwood finally agrees to be Swank’s trainer and manager; he shows her what her strengths and weaknesses are, helps her book fights, and does his best to help her make good life decisions, even though she goes against him to try and support her cartoonishly unsupportive mother and siblings. Nothing in this section is breaking any new ground, but I love a good boxing movie and this part checks all the boxes. The final section is the melodrama that I won’t spoil, but after something bad happens this part takes a sharp turn from the sports-focused storylines and instead becomes about how we act under extreme circumstances. As an already-professed fan of melodramas (and weepies) this part always keeps me under the spell that the first two acts got me into, but when I’m not actively watching the movie this part does trouble me from the perspective of what it is actually saying. Because this movie is so effective while I watch it, I am happy keeping it as a 10, but I do think that it’s overall message could be a bit troubling.

The performances here unite the three acts and keep the movie a breeze to watch throughout. Clint Eastwood perfects his grumpy old man routine as the gym-owner-with-a-heart-of-gold, and his entire journey here feels realistic even as the story goes over the top. Morgan Freeman as his friend/employee is also amazing, doing his usual narrator duties as well. Voiceover can be cloying, but as with The Shawshank Redemption, Freeman has mastered the art and this movie uses it well. Hilary Swank won her second acting Oscar for this film, and it is well-deserved. She works so well with Eastwood and is able to play his usual female and next-generation character with more complexity and humanity than they are usually given. Besides the big three, there are also a bunch of supporting parts for actors who have since become famous. Mike Colter is great as the boxer that Eastwood trained before Swank, and whose understandable betrayal leads to Eastwood’s reluctance to train again. Jay Baruchel is good as a charity case that works out at the gym even though it would be politically incorrect for him to play the part today. Anthony Mackie and Michael Peña, long before they joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe, play the two bullies who work out at the gym and torment both Baruchel and Swank. From top to bottom, the casting here is on point.

This movie does have some similarities to Unforgiven and other Eastwood films, but I am still very happy that both are Academy Award Best Picture winners as they are different enough and both amazing. I do have some quibbles about the ending message here, but overall it is a journey I always enjoy going on.