2004--Million Dollar Baby, Clint Eastwood

2004--Million Dollar Baby, Clint Eastwood

Nominated: The Aviator, Finding Neverland, Ray, Sideways

Should have won: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Be sure to see: Hotel Rwanda, The Incredibles, Kill Bill Vol. 2, The Notebook, Open Water, Phantom of the Opera, Shaun of the Dead

“One hundred and ten.”--Eddie “Scrap iron” Dupris

     Only the third sports movie and second boxing movie to win best picture, Clint Eastwood's twenty-fifth feature length film behind the camera, Million Dollar Baby, is an exceptional character study of its main players. It also takes its viewers on a roller coaster of emotions; it is depressing, then uplifting, all leading to one of the most downbeat endings in cinema history, yet it is probably necessary.

     Like The Shawshank Redemption and March of the Penguins, it is narrated by Morgan Freeman. Freeman plays Eddie “Scrap iron” Dupris who lives in a back room in a local gym run by Frank Dunn, played by Eastwood. The gym is low key. People come to spar and train while Scrap and Dunn talk to each other in meaningless conversations, not unlike those characters on Seinfeld might have. Then someone catches their eye. That someone is Maggie Fitzgerald. Maggie stands away from all the men at a punching bag. She jabs at it, slowly and easily, and Frank steps in to investigate.

     He finds that Maggie is self-described trash and wants nothing more than for Frank to train her. He will have no part in training a woman, especially one he considers too old for the sport. But she persists and he takes her on. Through his tutelage and some natural grit, she makes a run of wining some bouts in furious fashion, matches rarely lasting more than one round.

     One of the aspects of the movie I enjoyed was the pace. Maggie starts taking Frank's advice little by little. Learning how to punch; how to hold her hands and how to movie her feet, even practicing her footwork at her waitress job. I appreciated all of the extra scenes that at first seemed to flesh out certain characters, and then the scene ricochets and reveals things about other characters. A conversation between Maggie and Scrap about Scrap's 109^th fight is a piece of poetry. Or take for instance Danger, a slow kid who wants to fight but will never amount to anything. Everyone seems to know this except him and when a guy with a bigger ego takes advantage of this, Scrap steps in steals the scene, delivering my favorite line in the movie which would make no sense unless you remember what he said earlier in the bar.

     Frank doesn't really like to take chances so, even though Maggie is demolishing her competition, he steers away from a particularly dangerous challenger, one who fights dirty and makes no apologies for it. He takes one chance by moving her up a class but she does fine. Then, like most sports movies, it leads to the “big game” or in this case big fight against Billie “The Blue Bear”, a real-life boxer and it shows.

     It is at this point the plot turns in a way that toyed with my emotions. My excited emotion I felt at the end of the fight deflates for a reason I won't spoil. When it happens it sets up the final act of the movie and I was depressed the entire time. Is this a wise decision by writer Paul Haggis? My first thought was no but then I remembered many distinguished movies with downbeat endings. I must admit though it was a rare time I forgot it is just a fictional movie. I wondered how many people wanted to kill The Blue Bear or, God forbid, Lucia Rijker the actress who portrayed her. One would hope people can separate fiction and reality but you never know.

     I've never been a fan of boxing, in fact I hate it, but like Rocky before it, Million Dollar Baby is a worthy contender for the Oscar. My pick still goes to the vastly unappreciated Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It was a very good movie despite my hatred for the sport. I found it odd when that, when I told someone I didn't want to see it because I didn't like boxing, he said "Oh it isn't about boxing but a boxer." I can't believe I fell for that one.