Million Dollar Baby ***** (2004, Hilary Swank, Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman ) – Classic Movie Review 750

Director Clint Eastwood’s 2004 Oscar-winning movie Million Dollar Baby sees him also star as Frankie Dunn, a grizzled old hard-nut who owns a rundown old gym, where he scratches a living training boxers. One day a girl, Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), a determined waitress already too old for the fight game, arrives looking for him to train and manage her.

‘Girly, tough ain’t enough,’ he tells her. But she persists and gradually sneaks in under his guard, with the help of his gruff but warm-hearted old buddy, one-eyed ex-boxer and now gym caretaker, Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris (Morgan Freeman).

A labour of love by Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby is a knockout, which spars on championship form throughout, and ends up with a punch to the gut that people will be talking about years from now. Eating up and spitting out super dialogue, by turns cynical, warm and funny, the three stars are inspired, and simply never better.

The boxing sequences pack a real punch but it is the raw power of the emotional scenes that make this great movie. A meditation on love, loyalty, human frailty and death, this would have made a perfect final testament for Eastwood, but he was on a roll so he obviously decided he mustn’t stop here.

Is there any other movie where Clint cries?

Million Dollar Baby is the much deserved winner of four Oscars, for Best Director, Film, Actress (Hilary Swank) and Supporting Actor (Morgan Freeman). Nominated as best actor, Eastwood lost out to Jamie Foxx in Ray. It is desperately unlucky that, as it is Clint’s superlative performance that motivates the entire movie. Paul Haggis’s beautifully crafted adapted screenplay (based on the stories Rope Burns by F X Toole) and the film editing were also Oscar nominated.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 750 derekwinnert.com