My first movie from the IMDb's Top 250 unseen movies was Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby, winner of Best Picture and several other Oscars. Starring Hilary Swank and Eastwood himself, it's a small intimate story of a female boxer and her mentor.It's a very well made movie. A movie that I wanted to like more than I ended up doing.
Hilary Swank's strong and effective performance was well worth the Oscar win (though I wish Kate Winslet would've won that year). Clint Eastwood does his usual grumpy old man role, though a bit more warmhearted this time and if I'm not mistaken, it's the first time you see him cry on screen, which was a brave choice on his part. Morgan Freeman's performance is nothing he can't do in his sleep, so I'm wagering that the Oscar he got for this one was more of a "It's about time" award.
Eastwood's direction is beautifully understated and the lighting in the movie was nothing short of brilliant. The gym especially was done gorgeously and having people wrapped in shadows occasionally worked very well in the movie.
But where the movie falls apart for me is the screenplay. Hard as they try, Eastwood, Swank and Freeman can't save the movie from a cliched script from Paul Haggis. Aside from the three main characters, all the other people in the movie are extremely one-dimensional, especially Swank's character's family, who might as well have dressed as vampires and gone "MWAHAHAHAHA" through their scenes. Also, I must've missed the point of the subplot with Jay Baruchel's Danger as it doesn't seem to amount to anything.
The movie's passion to explain everything to the viewer felt very weird as well. Obviously a movie like this is geared more for the mature audiences, but there's nothing left for the viewer to figure out and even if you have something that bothers you, don't worry, Morgan Freeman's narration will tell you everything. And I mean, everything. At times it felt like watching an audiobook.
I love Clint Eastwood's movies. Unforgiven is one of the greatest movies ever made and Mystic River and Gran Torino get a thumbs up from me. This one left me a little cold though, mainly because of the weak script. I can understand why it won Best Picture though, stories like these thriumph very well at the Oscars, and it wasn't a very big year movie-wise anyway. Though why Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind wasn't even nominated for Best Picture baffles me. But that's a story for another time. My rating for Million Dollar Baby: 6/10.
One down, 81 to go!
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