Million Dollar Baby

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Drama

The question is, what’s to like about this movie? The answer is simple; a lot. It shows the story of an old and defeated fight trainer and a humble girl who thinks she can be a champion boxer. Narrated (much like in Shawshank Redemption) by my favorite actor Morgan Freeman, who plays an aging former boxer with one eye and a story to tell.

It is a simple story, directed with simplicity without much pretensions which is rare in movies. Clint Eastwood really conjured up a movie where we can sit very quiet and just drawn deeply into the lifes of three characters that we grown to care about.

I don’t know if she really deserve her second Oscar, but Hillary Swank is astounding as Maggie the boxer. You can literally observe the grown of confidence and muscularity increasing in time. Freeman also delivers just about enough as the witty observer, without overdoing anything. And Clint’s character move from reluctant trainer into attentive manager with ease. The chemistry between these three is very interesting, without turning up fake at all.

Mind you this is not a regular boxing movie though. Rather a movie about a boxer, and a woman at that. It is a quite dark movie overall: plenty of black shadows and grim colored tone, and characters who delve with the obscurity of their fate. The story continue to follow Maggie’s career, providing us some pretty brutal fights and shows how hard Maggie is trying to change her fate from a simple waitress in a local deli to be something more meaningful. A lot more to it than what I’ve been writing, it’s a wee bit hard to elaborate without giving away the ending.

Million Dollar Baby is simply a masterwork, worthy of an Oscar.