Number 227 on the top 1000 films of all time is Clint Eastwood's 2004 sports drama Million Dollar Baby.
Clint Eastwood plays Frank Dunn, an irascible boxing coach and gymowner. When Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) asks him to train her, he refuses as she's a girl. But thanks to some gentle encouragement from his friend and former protege Eddie "Scrap-Iron" Dupris (Morgan Freeman,) he soon changes his mind.
I'm going to say it now. I don't like boxing. It doesn't interest me. And as such, boxing films don't interest me regardless of whether they're Rocky, Raging Bull or Million Dollar Baby. I was bored for much of this film but that was more down to my own personal likes and dislikes rather than the film itself.
But I do have one valid criticism and that is Clint Eastwood's acting. He is great director, but he always acts the same character. In Gran Torino he is a grumpy old war veteran, in Unforgiven, he is a grumpy old bounty hunter and in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, he is a grumpy, old cowboy. You get the picture. Million Dollar Baby was no exception to this rule. He plays a grumpy, old boxing instructor with a secret heart of gold. How he was nominated for a best acting Oscar, I will never understand.
But I do understand why Hilary Swank won the Best Actress Oscar and Morgan Freeman, the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Their characters were far more interesting to watch. Maggie has a dysfunctional relationship with her trailer trash, welfare fraud families, while Scrap went blind in one after one fight too many. It was interesting to see how these two characters relate to each other, due to how they both have dark backgrounds.
Seeing Scrap knockout the obnoxious upstart boxer Shawrelle Berry (Anthony Mackie) was one of the best parts of the film.
The ending also surprised me. I thought it would be a cheesy happily ever after, but it was anything but...Dunn arranges for Maggie to fight the German champion Billie "The Blue Bear" Osterman who has a reputation for fighting dirty. In the fight, The Blue Bear sucker punches Maggie and she falls onto her stool and breaks her neck, leaving her as a quadriplegic. To make matters worse, her leg is amputated when her bedsores become infected. She asks Frank to euthanise her which he reluctantly does. I totally thought she would make a miraculous recovery and take down the Blue Bear, but it wasn't to be. And I liked this ending better. It wasn't a fairytale ending, but something more realistic and powerful.
Overall, while Swank and Freeman were great, I just didn't care for this film. But that's just because I don't like boxing.
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