There is a special poetry in the movies reserved for boxing. There is a lyricism on the screen created in the flow of movement and punches, with honesty about the violence you don't see elsewhere. It reduces cinema to its most fundamental: a struggle for recognition.
Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby is a film about respect at its core. It revolves around a small cast in a squalid boxing gym on the fringes of a Midwestern city. The gym is owned by Scraps, played by Morgan Freeman, a former boxer who once had great potential. He runs the place with the help of his friend Frankie Dunn, played by Clint Eastwood. Hilary Swank is Maggie Fitzgerald, a 31-year-old waitress about whom Scraps narrates, "All her life, she knew she was trash."
Maggie finds release from her destitute life in boxing and seeks out Frankie as a trainer. Frankie scoffs: "Girlie, tough ain't enough." But she persists and eventually wears down Frankie's resistance.
To reveal more of the plot would be a crime because it would ruin the joy of discovering the film for the first time. The screenplay, adapted by Paul Haggis from F.X. Toole's book, Rope Burns, is extraordinary. Like a good boxer, the script is unpredictable. The events are unexpected, and the script overwhelms with its power.
In particular, the dialogue is refreshing. Sometimes it's sharp and sensitive, almost poetic. "See that?" Scraps says to Frankie when Maggie knocks an opponent out, "That's what Sugar Ray would've done. The girl's got Sugar."
Other times, the words are observant and frank, such as when Frankie comments on a poor kid's lack of technique: "It hurts me to see him do that, hitting the air as if it's going to punch back."
But what's really special about the script is that we never feel the characters are simply instruments of the story. Frankie, Scraps and Maggie are all essential to the movie's achievement. Each character shoulders the sadness of the others, and in scenes that celebrate their triumphs and misfortunes, it becomes evident the film would be lost without their interaction.
It is fitting that Eastwood chose to make Million Dollar Baby, being a veteran of screen Westerns, a genre populated by characters who aspire beyond their circumstances. In many ways, this film isn't much of a departure for the man who made Unforgiven. All that changes in Million Dollar Baby is the geography: instead of the loneliness of the frontier, there is the emptiness of an urban wasteland.
Eastwood spends a lot of time exploring the faces of each character with the camera. Hilary Swank evokes warmth, grace, humility, and dignity as Maggie. Eastwood and Freeman have been acting so long their faces seem chiseled by time. Each time they are on-screen, we enter new territory in the film's emotional landscape. Each weathered expression on their faces uncovers layers of unexpected depth in their characters.
Above all, Eastwood is an honest director. Every scene feels realized and necessary. He trusts the material -- Eastwood shot the film without changing one word of Haggis's script.
What emerges is one of the finest films in years. Though there will always be movies about boxing, there will be only one Million Dollar Baby.
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