Million Dollar Baby film review

certificate_12A

MILLION DOLLAR BABY

Million Dollar Baby cries out for Oscar recognition. Three Oscar winners (among them two bona fide legends) in a story of triumph against all the odds involving struggle, the will to succeed and personal redemption. Many American critics have already decided that it is the year's best film, and while it will certainly play a part come Academy Awards time, it ultimately may prove just a little too saccharine to walk away with the top prizes. Certainly as far as British audiences are concerned, this is a film which may not travel across the water that well.

The story behind Clint Eastwood's 25th outing as director is as unlikely as the story portrayed in the film itself. Jerry Boyd was a writer who wrote a book of boxing short stories called Rope Burns, and after a life of being rejected by every single publishing house, he died only a month after hearing that Eastwood had signed up to make a film out of his work. Boyd spent years as a cut man to young boxers, the assistant in the corner who comes in to clean them up. He never cleaned up a fighter of note, and never contested a major fight.

Eastwood plays a character who mirrors Boyd in many ways. As Frankie Dunn, he is an ageing trainer whose proteges always leave him as soon as the big time beckons. Scraping a living running an old-fashioned gym, he inspires everyone who walks through its doors, even though he knows most of them are dreamers. He is assisted by Scrap (Morgan Freeman), himself a former boxer who similarly never scaled the heights he so craved. When Frankie's latest hope joins a new management team, it seems the only thing left to do is throw in the towel.

Suddenly a woman turns up at his gym. Maggie Fitzgerald (Swank) is fit, keen, and inept, but she idolises Frankie. She is self-confessed white trash and Frankie dismisses her. He won't train a woman. But Maggie refuses to leave. She trains day and night and ekes out a meagre living as a waitress. Inevitably Frankie begins to think again.