Review of Million Dollar Baby (2004) by Renzo V — 27 Jan 2014

As a fan of the sweet science, it is a little odd that I put off seeing this film for as long as I did. Hilary Swank is an aging waitress but wants more out of her life, so she starts going to a boxing gym in hopes she'll be trained.

After much pestering, Clint Eastwood finally agrees to train her. Having problems with his own daughter, he sort of develops a new father/daughter relationship with her. He helps her from her small fights all the way up to her bigger fights until she gets sucker punched and gets injured.

Her life quickly deteriorates since she is entirely bed-ridden and has to live a machine assisted life. I can agree with some of the criticisms that she wins in such an odd way of always knocking her opponents out.

Also, her final opponent would have been disqualified long before the sucker punch for her actions. Besides those things, I enjoyed this. It was a touching story and one of the better Eastwood directed movies which are mostly very good.