2004 / 132 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

By the end of 2004, I had seen quite a few good films. I’d seen a few films that I enjoyed, films that put a smile on my face, films that were well-made and lavishly mounted (and, as a counterpoint to those films, I had seen “Alexander”) but I hadn’t seen the Best Movie of the Year. Every year, there is one film, possibly even two if the gods are smiling down upon me, that leave me stunned, that rock my senses and have me staggering out of the theater like a zombie, marveling at what I have just seen and so bowled over by it that I can scarcely put the experience into words. Every year there is one film that makes me realize why it is I spend so many hours in dark theaters, hoping to be emotionally stimulated by the shimmering illusory lives of fake people. I had seen many good films in 2004, but I had not seen the film that met those criteria. I hadn’t seen a movie where I left saying “That’s the best movie of the Year” (though “Closer” was, well, close).

Until, that is, I bought a ticket for “Million Dollar Baby”.

I was caught unprepared. Sure, I had been hearing critics saying for weeks that this was a great movie, that it was one of the best films of the year if not THE best. But they had said the same thing about “The Aviator” and while “The Aviator” is definitely a good movie and it is well made, it did not leave me numb as the end credits rolled. These were the same critics that had told me, one year before, that “Mystic River” would, in the words of Peter Travers “take a piece out of me” and while it was a good movie and well made, it did not manage that feat. I was expecting the same experience from “Million Dollar Baby”. I was expecting a good movie, because Clint has never done a bad movie. But I was not expecting a movie that left me awed, nearly broken. “Mystic River” didn’t quite get the job done (I think it was the sense of doom hanging over every frame that robbed the film of its ultimate impact; the whole movie felt so tragic that when the true tragedy of the ending asserted itself, it held little surprise) but “Million Dollar Baby” did. When I walked out of “Million Dollar Baby”, I wasn’t exactly the same guy I was walking in. I had the same experience when I watched “American Beauty” every single time. When “American Beauty” ended, I felt numb. I felt as though I had been pinned to the seat and could not move. Every time I saw “American Beauty” (and, actually, every time I see it still) I have to summon a little something extra to get to my feet. After my first viewing of “Million Dollar Baby”, I felt exactly the same way. I was stunned, breathless, and utterly numb. My feet felt about a million miles away. And in this moment I realized something painfully obvious all over again: Clint Eastwood is a god roaming the Earth. He’s a god of film, at the very least.

“Million Dollar Baby” is about a girl who really wants to be a boxer. When I type it out, that doesn’t look very impressive. But when you boil it down to its bones, that’s what this movie is. It’s just that simple. A girl (Hilary Swank) wants to be a boxer and she thinks a grizzled old boxing coach named Frank (Clint) is the only man who can help her do it. Frank refuses at first, but this girl is tenacious. She keeps returning to his gym, she keeps training herself and waiting. She isn’t annoying about it, she isn’t overbearing; she’s just there. And, eventually, she wears him down. That isn’t a secret. If you’ve ever seen a movie, you know it’s going to happen.

It’s everything that happens after that which realigns our perceptions of what a movie like this can be. It’s a film about paternal love, really. It’s about two people filling the missing roles in one another’s lives. It’s a love story, but it’s about a different kind of love, perhaps an even more important and more complicated kind of love. And the movie’s greatness hits you like a proverbial sucker punch. It draws you in with great acting, some humorous and observant dialogue (dialogue that feels like the way people actually talk, but contains a lot more poetry) and some exciting fight sequences. And once Clint has you in the palm of his hand, he begins to lay all his cards out on the table. When the last of these cards is turned over, only then do you realize how expertly the director has played your emotions. I hesitate even to say that Clint has played the audience’s emotions. He has simply given them people to care about, and gotten the audience to care so deeply that the fates of all the characters have a real impact.

This movie works on the emotions better than any other film of 2004, and I feel that’s a highly underrated commodity. Hell, the emotional connection I have with a movie is what determines if I watch it again. I like movies like “Casablanca”; I just don’t really feel connected to them. I do, however, feel a connection with the characters in movies like “Titanic” and “American Beauty”. Does that make those movies better than movies like “Casablanca” and “The Graduate”, movies that I respect but are not moved by? In my opinion: yes. I like a movie that makes me feel something, a movie that moves me to tears or big laughs or stirs my emotions in some other amazing way more than I like a movie that is just well made. Ultimately, this is why I am happy that “Million Dollar Baby” won the Oscar over “The Aviator”, which had spectacle but no real heart. “Million Dollar Baby” doesn’t have much in the way of spectacle. It doesn’t have the luster of Scorsese’s film or the wickedly cool editing. But it’s got more heart than most of Scorsese’s films put together, and that’s more than enough. I’m not going to single out any one ingredient that makes this film work because every component of this film works as well as it can. I can’t say enough about the strengths of this film (and I can’t really go into detail about why it works so well without robbing you of the surprise of feeling the film unfold around you and envelope you) and I can’t think of a word to say against it.

I started out to review “Million Dollar Baby”. Instead, I revealed what it is about movies that I love, most of which is evident in “Million Dollar Baby”.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 28th, 2005 at 9:05 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.