You will hurt when these characters hurt. But I must warn you: if you watch Million Dollar Baby and feel yourself getting sucked in, it is only a film.
The direction, combined with the writing, draws us in to Maggie and Frank’s lives. It’s been done enough, and as an emotional drama, Million Dollar Baby could have been a better film without the letter trope and the voiceover.Ĭlint Eastwood’s direction keeps the story flowing together very well, so smoothly in fact that I can’t tell you why it works: it just does. What made it worse was the (excuse the mild spoiler) revelation that the voiceover was actually Eddie reading/writing a letter: the letter as context trope really should be left – in my opinion to when it is actually integral to the plot, such as Dangerous Liaisons or as the electronic media was in Searching. But I really wish it wasn’t there at all, it grated on me very badly. It gradually dwindled – fortunately – but came back right at the end to give a little bit more roundedness to Frankie’s backstory. That in itself is fine (it ain’t broke, as they say)… but why did they have to give him a voiceover to read? The voiceover is extremely annoying: I nearly switched off the film fifteen minutes in. He plays virtually the same personality as we’ve seen in nearly every other role of his. Morgan Freeman had a secondary role, as Eddie the ex-boxer partner in Frankie’s gym. Funny, I made a similar comment to someone about Widows earlier, too but unlike Widows, Million Dollar Baby‘s minor characters, such as Maggie’s family, and the other boxers at the gym, were pretty much two dimensional. The acting and character writing were both superb, though perhaps we’re all familiar enough with Hilary Swank and Clint Eastwood that we don’t expect anything else. But when Million Dollar Baby does focus on Maggie’s character, it is about her determination, and about her finding something which she can love to pull herself out of an unsatisfying “trailer trash” life, not her gender at all. It’s not really about boxing either: the sport is the device used to tell the story of Frank’s search for redemption, and of the high and low tides of his relationship with Maggie. But this one isn’t even about Maggie, it’s more about the men surrounding her, especially her trainer, Frank.
#Million dollar baby hilary swank full#
Girlfight), or at least be full of women (e.g. Perhaps a film about women in sports should be made by a woman (e.g. The marketing for the film certainly led me to expect a film about “women in sports” but perhaps that was the easiest of the many themes for them to portray. I don’t know if the original story was about the gender gap in sports, or if the main character just happened to be female. But Frank’s initial reluctance to train “girls” was glossed over once Maggie had persuaded him with her sheer persistence. When I first started watching Million Dollar Baby and the main characters were introduced, I thought aha, if Gran Torino was Eastwood’s film about accepting people from other races, this is his gender equivalent: way to satisfy Hollywood commentators and awards panels. There are other themes and elements too, though and they don’t all weave together well. It’s a rags-to-riches story, with a large chunk of relationship drama and a smaller – but no less significant – chunk of a cautionary tale. On the surface, Million Dollar Baby is a film about novice boxer Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) and her progression as far as a life-changing title fight under the training of an old-fashioned manager Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood). Million Dollar Baby boasts wonderful acting and character writing, but a frustrating treatment of themes within a plot adapted from two short stories.