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Million Dollar Baby Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: PG-13 (for violence, some disturbing images, thematic material and language) Theater release: January 28, 2005 by Warner Bros. Directed by: Clint Eastwood Runtime: 2 hours 17 minutes Cast: Clint Eastwood (Frankie Dunn), Hilary Swank (Maggie Fitzgerald), Morgan Freeman (Eddie "Scrap-Iron" Dupris), Jay Baruchel (Danger Barch), Brian O'Bryne (Father Horvak) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Editor's note: Many published reviews for this film—though not this one—reveal the surprising turn that the story takes in the third act, so, consumer beware. Knowing where the story is headed won't ruin the film for you, but it will significantly alter your experience.

Some people live lives in which their prayers are answered, their dreams fulfilled, their needs met, and their lives richly blessed. Others live lives of frustration, longing to hear God's voice, carrying excruciating burdens and struggling to maintain their belief that their Creator cares … or that he exists at all.

Million Dollar Baby looks like a boxing movie, but at its heart, it is the story of a spiritually frustrated man. Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) is a boxing trainer and "cut man." When a fighter is wounded, Frankie steps into the ring, wipes up the blood, resets broken bones, and gauges how much more they can take.

Clint Eastwood plays Frankie Dunn, a man in search of meaning—and of God

He may be good at patching up others' wounds, but Frankie can't stop his own cuts from bleeding. At night, he kneels, weighed down by the burden of regrets, and asks God to heal his wounds. He attends daily mass, but instead of voicing his deepest conflict, he harasses an exasperated priest with dogmatic questions about the Trinity and the Immaculate Conception. And while he spends his weeks counseling fighters about how to move their feet, his vocabulary becomes a kind of poetry describing his struggle to "protect himself" in fights he can't win on his own. Ultimately, when Frankie and his partner Scrap-Iron (Morgan Freeman) talk about boxing, they're talking about survival. "Everybody's got a particular number of fights in 'em," says Scrap. "Nobody knows what that number is."

There's no American filmmaker more concerned with mortality that Clint Eastwood. He's preoccupied with the consequences of violence and the forces that motivate men to fight. Here, he's chosen the perfect actor to play the troubled trainer—himself. Those famous Westerns about the "pale rider" who dealt out death and judgment have made Eastwood's visage one of Hollywood's most familiar. As he gets older, he digs deeper into questions of conscience, and his wizened, tightly drawn face seems to become more grim and skull-like, as if morphing into a symbol of his chosen subject.

Million Dollar Baby is not a Western, but it's just as primal and bleak as Unforgiven. This is Eastwood's most accomplished film, and he finds in Paul Haggis's screenplay (based on short stories by F.X. Toole) the richest, most complex character he's ever played. It's a familiar plotline—the grizzled old pro being convinced to take a gamble on a longshot. That longshot is Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), a young woman from backwoods "Missourah" desperate to escape her "trailer-trash" past by chasing her dream of being a fighter. Frankie thinks girlfights are "the latest freakshow," but the last fighter he trained betrayed him, and that's only added to his feelings of failure as a father figure. There's no suspense in whether he'll take Maggie on; we know they're a perfect match. What we don't know is just how intimately we'll get to know them, and how hard a road they'll travel together.

After initial hesitation, Frankie agrees to train Maggie (Hilary Swank) for the ring

Million Dollar Baby joins Sideways, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Before Sunset among 2004's finest examples of excellent writing. Haggis develops characters so real and endearing, you'll wish you could invite them out for pie and coffee. Tom Stern—the film's chief lighting technician—frames them in the simple, stark imagery of a bright white boxing ring in a dark arena, and the cold illumination of bare light bulbs in a training gym after hours. While the cinematography tells this bare-bones tale sharply and efficiently, and Eastwood's understated guitar notes gently enhance the drama, it's Freeman's doleful, musical narration that gives Million Dollar Baby its haunting beauty. Great filmmakers show more than they tell, and thus it's fair to ask if Million Dollar Baby might be earning too much praise as a film when most of its power lies in its narration. But in a year when movies heaped indulgent visual spectacle on undernourished scripts, it's hard to complain about a movie with so much exquisite language.

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Spoil the Ending?	Printer view
We've actually been talking about that around here lately, thanks to one recent film. Think we're crazy? Read on to find out why—and then let us know what you think.

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Spoil the Ending, Part II	Printer view
We asked if you wanted to know how Million Dollar Baby ends, and most of you said no—but enough of you said yes that we've decided to add that information to our review.