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MILLION DOLLAR BABY discussion (No Spoilers)

post #1 of 24
12/11/04 at 5:13am
Thread Starter 
http://chud.com/reviews/718

What a terrific movie.
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post #2 of 24
12/11/04 at 6:12am
Glad to hear that, a good Eastwood film is priceless. If this is even in the same league as Unforgiven or Mystic River we're in for a treat.
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post #3 of 24
12/11/04 at 8:11am
Great review Nick. It seems Eastwood is really getting better with age. I love the look of this movie, constantly steeped in shadows, like everyone has something to hide which is the underlying theme of the movie.

I've never been much of a fan of Hilary Swank but Eastwood has always been good when it comes to actors. I think this movie will definitely be in the running come awards time if it's as good as Nick says.
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post #4 of 24
12/11/04 at 8:36am
Can't wait to see this.
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post #5 of 24
12/11/04 at 10:48am
Clint's the man. What a gifted filmmaker. I hope stays healthy for at least another 10 years.

I wish there was a book about his movie making experience. Something along the lines of Truffauts Hitchcock interview book.
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post #6 of 24
12/11/04 at 11:20am
Wow. Fantastic. Nice to see Haggis' work up on the big screen - I'm still pissed over EZ Streets getting cancelled.

Great year for films.
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post #7 of 24
12/11/04 at 2:49pm
Excellent review. I was worried on this one. Bloodwork and That Old Guys in Space Movie were just godawful bad. Thanks for alleviating my fears.
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post #8 of 24
12/11/04 at 3:08pm
Aw, Space Cowboys was a fun ride, but it's nice to see Clint stick to the serious stuff.
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post #9 of 24
12/11/04 at 6:32pm
Ebert called it a masterpiece. He said he had tears in his eyes by the end credits, and that there wasn't an "inch of fat" to the narrative.
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post #10 of 24
12/11/04 at 8:42pm
I might make the trip to Toronto to see it. If not, I'm gonna have to wait until January... which I don't think I can do.
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post #11 of 24
12/12/04 at 10:51pm
Newsweek rave review:

Quote:
Million Dollar Baby: Clint Delivers A Knockout


This is a setting, and a setup, that comes booby-trapped with fight-movie cliches stretching from "Girlfight" and "Rocky" back to the '30s. This is not, however, Eastwood taking one of his genre-movie breathers; it may be a smaller movie than "Mystic River," but it's every bit as uncompromising, and even more powerful. Think you know where this story is headed? You don't, and I'll do you the favor of not telling. Let's just say that just when you think you've got its number, "Million Dollar Baby" blindsides you with a devastating hook.

As an actor, Eastwood has rarely taken on a character as complex as Frankie Dunn, a gruff, guilt-ridden Roman Catholic who attends mass every day, driving his priest crazy with his incessant, irreverent questions. Frankie broods over the estranged daughter he drove away years earlier. His only confidant is Scrap (Morgan Freeman), a battle-scarred former fighter who looks after the Hit Pit, Frankie's old-style gym. Frankie studies Gaelic, reads Yeats, and doesn't like to take chances. He'd rather hold his fighters back from taking a title shot if there's a risk they might get hurt, and he pays for it when his charges inevitably abandon him for greener pastures. No one has lured him out of his shell until Maggie comes along, and it's obvious the love that grows between them is the love he couldn't give his daughter. In front of the camera, Eastwood's often coasted on his iconic persona; here he inhabits his character completely. Playing a prickly, haunted man who always keeps his guard up, Eastwood gives his most daring, emotional, unguarded performance.

Swank, who was extraordinary in "Boys Don't Cry," hasn't fared so well in conventional leading-lady roles where she tends to disappear. Extremity becomes her. As Maggie, she pops off the screen, funny, touching and ferociously physical. Swank makes us feel the exhilaration that courses through Maggie's lithe body once she learns proper boxing technique and unleashes the knockout blows that send her opponents crashing to the canvas. Her body language shouts.

The well-observed details of the fight world come courtesy of F. X. Toole, whose story in "Rope Burns" is the basis of Paul Haggis's screenplay. Haggis has done a terrific job of remaining faithful to the text while fleshing out the characters. Freeman's Scrap, who narrates the story (OK, maybe there's a little more voice-over than is necessary), doesn't exist in Toole's short story. He's a savvy addition, giving Frankie a sounding board—and Freeman a wonderful role. Margo Martindale is brilliantly loathsome as Maggie's white-trash mom, a woman of chilling selfishness.


"Million Dollar Baby" could have been sentimental or quaint, but Haggis and Eastwood are made of sterner stuff. In his clean, unhurried, unblinking fashion, Eastwood takes the audience to raw, profoundly moving places. If you fear strong emotions, this is not for you. But if you want to see Hollywood filmmaking at its most potent, Eastwood has delivered the real deal.

—David Ansen
Number 4 in Ansen's top 10.

Quote:
4. Million Dollar Baby
A knockout blow from Clint Eastwood, this boxing saga leaves you reeling.
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post #12 of 24
12/15/04 at 8:20am
Ebert's review is one of the most glowing of his that I've ever read.

Quote:
Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby" is a masterpiece, pure and simple, deep and true. It tells the story of an aging fight trainer and a hillbilly girl who thinks she can be a boxer. It is narrated by a former boxer who is the trainer's best friend. But it's not a boxing movie. It is a movie about a boxer. What else it is, all it is, how deep it goes, what emotional power it contains, I cannot suggest in this review, because I will not spoil the experience of following this story into the deepest secrets of life and death. This is the best film of the year.

Eastwood plays the trainer, Frankie, who runs a seedy gym in Los Angeles and reads poetry on the side. Hilary Swank plays Maggie, from southwest Missouri, who has been waitressing since she was 13 and sees boxing as the one way she can escape waitressing for the rest of her life.

Otherwise, she says, "I might as well go back home and buy a used trailer and get a deep fryer and some Oreos." Morgan Freeman is Eddie, who was managed by Frankie into a title bout. Now he lives in a room at the gym and is Frankie's partner in conversations that have coiled down through the decades. When Frankie refuses to train a "girly," it's Eddie who convinces him to give Maggie a chance: "She grew up knowing one thing. She was trash."

These three characters are seen with a clarity and truth that is rare in the movies. Eastwood, who doesn't carry a spare ounce on his lean body, doesn't have any padding in his movie, either: Even as the film approaches the deep emotion of its final scenes, he doesn't go for easy sentiment, but regards these people, level-eyed, as they do what they have to do.

Some directors lose focus as they grow older. Others gain it, learning how to tell a story that contains everything it needs and absolutely nothing else. "Million Dollar Baby" is Eastwood's 25th film as a director, and his best. Yes, "Mystic River" is a great film, but this one finds the simplicity and directness of classical storytelling; it is the kind of movie where you sit very quietly in the theater and are drawn deeply into lives that you care very much about.

Morgan Freeman is the narrator, just as he was in "The Shawshank Redemption," which this film resembles in the way the Freeman character describes a man who became his lifelong study. The voice is flat and factual: You never hear Eddie going for an affect or putting a spin on his words. He just wants to tell us what happened. He talks about how the girl walked into the gym, how she wouldn't leave, how Frankie finally agreed to train her, and what happened then. But Eddie is not merely an observer; the film gives him a life of his own when the others are offscreen. It is about all three of these people.

Hilary Swank is astonishing as Maggie. Every note is true. She reduces Maggie to a fierce intensity. Consider the scene where she and Eddie sit at a lunch counter, and Eddie tells how he lost the sight in one eye, how Frankie blames himself for not throwing in the towel. It is an important scene for Freeman, but I want you to observe how Swank has Maggie do absolutely nothing but listen. No "reactions," no little nods, no body language except perfect stillness, deep attention and an unwavering gaze.

There's another scene, at night driving in a car, after Frankie and Maggie have visited Maggie's family. The visit didn't go well. Maggie's mother is played by Margo Martindale as an ignorant and selfish monster. "I got nobody but you, Frankie," Maggie says. This is true, but do not make the mistake of thinking there is romance between them. It's different, and deeper than that. She tells Frankie a story involving her father, whom she loved, and an old dog she loved, too.

Look at the way the cinematographer, Tom Stern, uses the light in this scene. Instead of using the usual "dashboard lights" that mysteriously seem to illuminate the whole front seat, watch how he has their faces slide in and out of shadow, how sometimes we can't see them at all, only hear them. Watch how the rhythm of this lighting matches the tone and pacing of the words, as if the visuals are caressing the conversation.

It is a dark picture overall: a lot of shadows, many night scenes, characters who seem to recede into private fates. It is a "boxing movie" in the sense that it follows Maggie's career and has several fight scenes. She wins from the beginning, but that's not the point; "Million Dollar Baby" is about a woman determined to make something of herself, and a man who doesn't want to do anything for this woman, and will finally do everything.

The screenplay is by Paul Haggis, who has worked mostly on TV but with this earns an Oscar nomination. Other nominations, possibly Oscars, will go to Swank, Eastwood, Freeman, the picture and many technicians -- and possibly the original score composed by Eastwood, which always does what is required and never distracts.

Haggis adapted the story from Rope Burns: Stories From the Corner, a 2000 book by Jerry Boyd, a 70-year-old fight manager who wrote it as "F.X. Toole." The dialogue is poetic but never fancy. "How much she weigh?" Maggie asks Frankie about the daughter he hasn't seen in years. "Trouble in my family comes by the pound." And when Frankie sees Eddie's feet on the desk: "Where are your shoes?" Eddie: "I'm airing out my feet." The foot conversation continues for almost a minute, showing the film's patience in evoking character.

Eastwood is attentive to supporting characters, who make the surrounding world seem more real. The most unexpected is a Catholic priest who is seen, simply, as a good man; movies all seem to put a negative spin on the clergy these days. Frankie goes to mass every morning and says his prayers every night, and Father Horvak (Brian F. O'Byrne) observes that anyone who attends daily mass for 23 years tends to be carrying a lot of guilt. Frankie turns to him for advice at a crucial point, and the priest doesn't respond with church orthodoxy but with a wise insight: "If you do this thing, you'll be lost, somewhere so deep you will never find yourself." Listen, too, when Haggis has Maggie use the word "frozen," which is what an uneducated backroads girl might say, but is also the single perfect word that expresses what a thousand could not.

Movies are so often made of effects and sensation these days. This one is made of three people and how their actions grow out of who they are and why. Nothing else. But isn't that everything?
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post #13 of 24
12/15/04 at 3:38pm
I think it's amazing how this movie jumped so far up on everyone's radar so quickly.

I mean, it's 100% on Rotten Tomatoes with 25 reviews.
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post #14 of 24
12/15/04 at 6:43pm
Salon.com (actually critic Charles Taylor, I guess) no likey.


The intro:

Quote:
Is Clint Eastwood the Manchurian Candidate? He must be. Brainwashing seems the only plausible explanation for the extraordinary praise given his drab, plodding movies. The overdeliberate, humorless revenge drama "Mystic River" was directed and hailed as if it were Greek tragedy -- and next to Eastwood's new "Million Dollar Baby," it is.

"Million Dollar Baby" is generating astonishing critical word of mouth, figuring prominently in the year-end voting for critics awards and winning Eastwood best-directing honors from the New York Film Critics Circle.

Have any of the critics praising "Million Dollar Baby" actually ever seen another movie -- any movie?

A compendium of every cliché from every bad boxing melodrama ever made, "Million Dollar Baby" (written by Paul Haggis from stories by F.X. Toole) tries to transcend its cornball overfamiliarity with the qualities that have long characterized Eastwood's direction -- it's solemn, inflated and dull.
The full review (behind subscription/daypass wall):

http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/revi...lar/index.html
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post #15 of 24
12/15/04 at 9:00pm
Saw this in NYC this afternoon. Light years ahead of the criminally overrated Mystic River, and comes ever so close to matching Unforgiven. One of the best of the year. Powerfully written and acted, and a sure shot for Best Picture.
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post #16 of 24
12/15/04 at 9:20pm
Gleiberman gave it an A-.


Quote:
Million Dollar Baby

Reviewed by Owen Gleiberman

It is no idle exaggeration to say that one doesn't, by and large, remember the women in Clint Eastwood films. They may be girlfriends or troublemakers, but they are seldom more than adjuncts decorating the core drama of masculine aggression, vengeance, and redemption. So when Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), a feisty 30ish diner waitress with a toothy bright smile and no discernible boxing talent, begins to work out at the quaintly dilapidated Los Angeles gym run by Frankie Dunn (Eastwood), and then pesters the crusty, scowling ringside veteran to manage her, I braced myself for Eastwood's The Karate Kid, Part V. But Million Dollar Baby, which Eastwood directed from screenwriter Paul Haggis' adaptation of the hard-hitting boxing-world stories of F.X. Toole, turns out to be a movie of tough excitement and surprise, even grace. It may be a classically staged tale of an underdog's triumph, but each scene is packed with authentic feeling, and if you think you know where Million Dollar Baby is headed — have no fear, you don't.

Frankie, a vintage Eastwood loner, with close-cropped white hair that evokes Paul Newman's and a rasp so scratchy and deep it seems to emanate from his soul, started out as a ''cut man,'' the member of a boxing team who patches up fighters' ripped and bloody faces so that they can go back to the ring for more punishment. His job was to be a healer who brings the pain. In the years since, Frankie has coached many boxers, some successfully, but his flaw as a manager is his lingering reticence: He's so cautious that he holds his fighters back from the dangers — and glories — of a title bout. When his current contender ditches him, the movie does a supple job of dramatizing how he's drawn to give Maggie a few pointers out of pure pity, which turns into habit, which then merges, over time, with his grudging affection for her down-home scrappy spirit. The film scarcely needs its too-corny-to-be-believable subplot about Frankie's estranged daughter, to whom he writes a (returned) letter every week: The chemistry between Eastwood and Swank is touching and spiky and true. It is also gently, unstatedly romantic.

Eastwood turns Frankie's gym into a saddened home of losers and dreamers, with Morgan Freeman, in full world-weary twinkle, as Scrap, Frankie's one-eyed former fighter and only friend. For a while, Million Dollar Baby is a gritty fairy tale in the tradition of Rocky and The Color of Money. Under Frankie's hand, Maggie develops a knockout punch as fearsome as Sugar Ray's, and if her success requires a modest suspension of disbelief, that is more than trumped by the violent bravura of the fight scenes. It may be easier, in the relatively novel world of female boxing, to accept that a fighter could triumph through sheer hunger and will; Swank's performance embodies those qualities with fetching moxie. But then Million Dollar Baby takes a sudden dark turn. Does it work? Let's just say that I never expected Clint Eastwood to do his finest filmmaking in years in a movie that evokes the tender religio-extravagance of Douglas Sirk.
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post #17 of 24
12/15/04 at 9:27pm
Rottentomatoes score so far...

Reviews counted: 41
Fresh: 40 Rotten: 1


Salon hasn't been added to the list yet.
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post #18 of 24
12/15/04 at 9:39pm
Mystic River is a solid movie in its own right; Million Dollar Baby is the best movie I've seen this year, outdistancing Collateral and Friday Night Lights. I need to see it a couple more times to get further perspective.

Haggis did a great job on this script, man. Not often you hear guys choke up in the theatre.
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post #19 of 24
12/17/04 at 4:57am
It's a great picture - a wonderful showcase of the patented slow burn Clint style. The man is a master of beautifully modulated narrative beats, and that's majestically on full display here. The great acting and great direction will definitely lodge these characters, relationships and milieu in your head as you leave the theater. Eastwood, Swank and Freeman are three of the best performance you might see ANY year, and the boxing scenes are exciting and awesomely directed. It's really the kind of rich and detailed storytelling Frank Darabont is desperately trying to recover. Mark my words, the film will get even better the more you ponder it. It's deceptively lean and quite methodical. Clint makes it look easy.

But it might be wise to not go into this expecting the second coming. I know it's hard to do that with the Rotten Tomatoes' rating and Oscar columnist brigade in full force, but it's not fair to what is really an exquisitely "small" film. Also, the last third of the narrative is rife with melodramatic turns. And while the build up and acting is just phenomenal (making those scenes achieve a kind of purity and transcendence), I could see the overwhelming hype ultimately hurting it for some folks. They will be expecting some kind of radical story development, instead of just going with the beautiful flow. I foresee some shallow backlash and nitpick for what is actually an intimate love story, powerfully told.

This is a true character piece. Go into this, expecting as much. Hilary Swank will break your heart. Clint will make you tear. You will fall in love with the acting of Morgan Freeman all over again.

Powerful film.
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post #20 of 24
12/17/04 at 7:44am
Glad to hear all the praise! I might be making the trip to Toronto on Monday to see it.
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post #21 of 24
12/17/04 at 9:42am
If it's your first trip to TO, Brendan, feel free to PM me. It's only playing at one theatre downtown, and it can be a little tricky to find. Right on the subway, though...
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post #22 of 24
12/21/04 at 2:01am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Subotai
If it's your first trip to TO, Brendan, feel free to PM me. It's only playing at one theatre downtown, and it can be a little tricky to find. Right on the subway, though...
We found it alright, no worries.

This is deffinitley one of the best films of the year.

I'll start with the performances. Hilary Swank is an actress that I've liked for a few years now. I'm not a big fan of hers but I know she can deliver almost all the time. Her performance as Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry was fine and was Oscar worthy. The other films that I have seen her in, she has always been good. But here she delivers. This is deffinitley a performance worthy of an Oscar if not just for the last few scenes.

Morgan Freeman delivers here like he always does. There's not much to say about his performance since I always expect the best from him and get it.

How does Clint fair? This deffinitley one of his finest hours. He shows a lot of emotion in this film and a great scene comes at one point where he's speaking with Father Horvak (Brian F. O'Bryne) about something very important and the way Clint plays it is perfect.

The cinematography is spectacular in this. Tom Stern impressed me with Mystic River and has once again done it. There's a scene where Maggie and Frankie are driving in a car at certain times we see Maggie's lit and Frankie's face is dark then we'll see Frankie's face or sometimes both or niether. I loved that. All the time we see the actors faces lighted from underneath (as it's supposed be the instrument panel lighting them) but here it seems like the street lamps are lighting them, which makes complete sense.

I also loved the dead, drweey look of Frankie's gym. It just seemed like a very depressing place, much like Frankie himself.

The story however, for the first half it seems, just feels like a cliched boxing story but it's the dialogue and the way actors play it that makes it work. It's what happens after that makes all the differance in the world.

I can't talk about it more without potentially spoiling things so I'll keep my mouth shut. All I can say is that this deffinitley one of the best films Eastwood has ever made deserves whatever awards it recieves. Roger Ebert was right, this is a masterpiece.
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post #23 of 24
12/21/04 at 5:12am
I agree mostly with the Salon review. This is a minor Eastwood film at best, to me.
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post #24 of 24
12/21/04 at 10:55am
I'm probably in the minority here, but I found Freeman's narration here superior to Shawshank. Far less overwhelming.
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