The Final Poll: Million Dollar Baby (2004)

This was the last poll of the year. It landed on "Boxing Day" up here in Canada, so I thought why not have the poll be about boxing, even though the holiday doesn't actually have anything to do with the sport at all. There just weren't enough Christmas movies that I wasn't already going to watch, or hadn't already seen, but there were plenty of boxing movies we never got around to seeing. One of those movies was the winner of the poll, Million Dollar Baby. I knew this was a popular movie, but I didn't know how popular until I looked it up and realized that it won the Oscars for Best Actress, Best Supporting Male, Best Director, and Best Picture of the Year! That would be a lot to live up to, but don't worry, I didn't find any of that out until after I watched it. Hit the jump for my thoughts on this Clint Eastwood directed, produced, and acted in film.

The story is about a young woman who struggles to get by on a waitressing job at a diner. This woman is Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), and the only thing she has left in the world that she enjoys is boxing. She admires Frank Dunn (Clint Eastwood) as the best trainer she's ever seen, and the only thing she wants in life is to be trained by him to become a great fighter. The only problem is that he can't stand the idea of training a girl. He thinks women's boxing is just "the next freak show" that the public wants to see. No matter how much he discourages her, and tries to get her to leave though, she just won't and she continues training in her own hopeless way. He eventually can't stand the sight of how bad she is, and agrees to take her under his wing, all the while insisting that he doesn't train girls. Lucky for her, he does train world class fighters! That's only the beginning though; the rest is something I don't think I can even mention without spoiling the film.

Frank agrees to train Maggie so long as she always does what he says. Of course, she rarely does.

When I started watching this movie, keep in mind that it was before I knew it had won all those awards. Basically, I had no idea this movie was going to be as good as it was. I thought maybe it would just be another boxing movie, with the catch being that this time it was a female fighter. I was actually surprised when it completely trounced Rocky Balboa in the poll and took 1st without challenge. This movie held so much more than I ever thought it would. The only problem I have is this: to talk about it properly, I'd have to spoil a very large part of the movie, which I won't dare do.

Morgan Freeman as Eddie "Scrap-Iron" Dupris stole the picture for me

The acting all around this film was rock solid. Props to Hilary Swank for making Maggie come to life on the screen. To be honest though, it was Morgan Freeman's character of Eddie "Scrap-Iron" Dupris that I liked the most. He hangs around Frank's gym doing the basic cleaning up, but he had this crazy cool looking dead eye that always grabbed my attention. Eventually we learn why and how he lost the vision in his right eye, and I thought this unexpected back story was great. We learn more about him, as well as Frank that really helps you get to know these characters you thought you already knew so well. Clint Eastwood was still good, but he was a little "one note" for me at this point that it was hard not to just see every other character he's ever played. He kind of just blended in with the background for me because of that.

I only had one problem with this whole movie, and that was Jay Baruchel who played the moronic, too-stupid-to-know-he's-being-racist simpleton "Danger" Barch. I hated this character, plain and simple. He was nothing but annoying, and I was kinda glad he got the shit beat out of him, if only because it meant something even cooler happened for a character I already loved, but also because it meant I wouldn't have to listen to him again for a good long while.

Maggie goes for the title shot!

While the story initially seems like your everyday boxing movie about a nobody going to the top, underneath the surface the film is about loss. Every character in the whole film has lost something. Frank, for reasons never made clear, has lost a daughter, in that she won't have contact with him. Eddie has lost an eye. "Danger" has lost his mind. Maggie's family has seemingly lost their humanity, while Maggie loses even more than can be imagined. The story starts off quite upbeat and positive, but it ends up being very drepressing and a tragedy. And with that, I've already said too much.

While I can see all the reasons why Million Dollar Baby won all those awards, I just wish it had connected with me on a more emotional level. I had a good time when things were going good, and it was a bummer when things were going bad, but I never really found myself really caring much for the characters like I imagine I should have. Even so, I did enjoy the movie quite a lot, despite the best efforts of the back half of the plot. I can't imagine how audiences felt coming out of this movie when it was released in theaters in 2004. I can safely recommend this movie, but be warned, it's a fairly heavy drama.