'Million Dollar Baby' is a knockout

By Jack Garner
Gannett News Service

MILLION DOLLAR BABY (PG-13) Four Stars (Excellent) Clint Eastwood elevates the fight film into a potent saga of a substitute father and daughter. Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman contribute memorable performances, along with Eastwood. Warner Bros., 132 minutes.

Now, with "Million Dollar Baby," which won a Golden Globe for best director earlier this month, Eastwood has done it again. He has again taken a traditional and often-cliched movie genre, the boxing film, and made it more. Maybe it's time to simply say he's one of America's truly great filmmakers.

In "Million Dollar Baby," Hilary Swank plays Maggie Fitzgerald, a 30-year-old waitress who tries boxing to gain self-respect and to rise above her Ozark trailer-trash background. She works out in a seedy Los Angeles gym and sets her sights on aged trainer Frankie Dunn (Eastwood) to mold her into a contender.

Frankie doesn't want to work with Maggie — he's opposed to women in the ring and assumes she's too old, at 30, to start a boxing career. But her fierce determination finally wins him over. Before long, Maggie demonstrates a gift for the sport.

But he's also reluctant to bring Maggie along too fast or position her for strong bouts that'll guarantee a championship fight. Guilt from at least two elements in his past holds Frankie back. First, he has an estranged daughter who marks his letters "return to sender," and Maggie has begun to seem like a daughter to him. And, second, an old friend and former boxer named Scrap (Morgan Freeman) now cleans the gym and sleeps there; and, years earlier, Frankie managed Scrap into a fight for which he might not have been ready. Scrap failed to get a championship belt — and he lost an eye.

Nonetheless, Scrap becomes Maggie's most ardent supporter. He doesn't want the past to hold back Frankie or his boxer.

So far, "Million Dollar Baby" has all the trappings of a traditional fight film, but that's when Eastwood and screenwriter Paul Haggis lift the story onto a more profound and deeply emotional plain. It's fueled in part by the source material, two evocative stories from a collection called "Rope Burns" by F.X. Toole.

What starts as a boxing saga, shifts assuredly into a poignant story of a substitute father and daughter, creating an unexpected element of pathos. To explain any more would be to lessen the film's power.

As others have pointed out, Eastwood's lean but affecting narrative skill is, in many ways, to film what Ernest Hemingway's was to literature. He directs with confidence and efficiency. He also acts brilliantly, playing his real age (74) and conveys a character of emotional complexity.

Hilary Swank, who nabbed a Golden Globe for her performance in this film, is equally impressive. She dives wholeheartedly into a role as unique and offbeat, in its own way, as her Oscar-winning "Boys Don't Cry" performance. Swank obviously worked hard in the gym, for she becomes remarkably buff. More importantly, she's utterly believable in and out of the ring. Eastwood's great "Unforgiven" co-star, Freeman, narrates the film with grace and gravitas, and to contribute a supporting character so memorable you wish he could be the center of his own story.

Need I say it? "Million Dollar Baby" is a knockout.

Rated PG-13, with ring violence, profanity.