Review of Million Dollar Baby (2004) by Gregmiller — 13 Mar 2005

The thing about boxing movies is there are very few possible endings: either our boxer wins or our boxer loses, with few exceptions, which in my mind excuses some of the cliches here. This movie deserves all the praise it has received: it is wonderfully written, beautifully acted, poignant and sparse, like Mystic River.

Eastwood has an eye for great films. Some of the characters are flat, but there does not NEED to be more than three rounded characters in a film, especially this one, so I did not mind Maggie's horrible family: for godssakes, it's incredible that Hollywood has produced a movie with round characters in the first place.

And I cannot understand the argument of Eastwood's "politics" that have so offended: this movie, like all good movies, does not argue one way or the other: what is important is that you believe Maggie asked him for it, and that you believe Frankie did it, because it is in the end about the characters involved.

Anyone so caught up in the "politics" here has mistaken this drama for something done by Michael Moore.