Movie Review: Million Dollar Baby

Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby" tells the simple story of an aging fight trainer and a white trash girl who thinks she can be a boxer. It is less a boxing movie and more about a boxer. The real strength of this movie is how involved you get with the characters. You get involved and pay a price for it. Eastwood plays a trainer running a seedy gym in LA. Hilary Swank plays Maggie who sees boxing as a way out of her hum drum life. Morgan Freeman plays a former boxer running the gym. His character is the narrator and of course reminds you of that role in “The Shawshank Redemption”. That might be a bad thing, but it was also a fine film so the comparison holds up.

While technically a boxing film, don’t expect “Rocky.” The fight scenes are standard, but remember this is not a boxing film. The supporting characters are there mostly to make the surrounding world seem real. The priest is one of the more interesting characters as he is not the stereotypical priest. The characters are the important thing here. I suspect the artistry of the writing and performances may be lost on some. It wasn’t lost on me. Questions are left to be debated and some to be unanswered. If you like to think about a movie and the characters you met while watching it this is a great film for that.

I was impressed. I’ll give it an A.