I wasn’t really expecting the movie to be any good (although I had the faintest hope, based on Eastwood and Freeman’s previous partnership, Unforgiven, that it might be). It confounded my expectations, though – it was even worse than I expected. Were they handing out joints at the screenings that award nominators go to? Swank is very good (aside from an atrocious “southern” accent that thankfully fades as the movie progresses), but otherwise, what were the people who praise this movie drinking, and where can I get some? It’s slow, dull, dripping with saccharine sentiment, and filled with the broadest, most clichéd stereotypes you’ll see in a movie putatively made for adults. To give you an idea, Swank doesn’t even have the least convincing southern accent in the movie. That honor goes to the comic relief, a scrawny kid named Danger who says things like, “I aims to fight” or “I likes that” and who cheerfully tells Freeman that “I doesn’t mind niggers none.” Please! I have my stereotypes and misconceptions of the southern people, but the screenwriter (nominated for an Oscar, incidentally) seems to have taken his entire knowledge of the South from Deliverance.
Eastwood acts even worse than he directs, playing an irascible old man like he’s on Saturday Night Live or something. Freeman’s not much better, doing his patented worldly-wise act that’s getting pretty threadbare. The two engage in painfully creaky, cutesy banter that sounds scripted and fake, though it’s meant to be charming and funny.
Scott grumbled (without having seen the movie) that Million Dollar Baby was just a rip-off of Girlfight, presumably because they both feature female boxers. But it’s nothing like Girlfight – there’s no real sexism at work here, the story’s more about Eastwood than Swank, and it’s more about “one last chance” than self-empowerment. If it rips off any movie, it would be Seabiscuit (also, coincidentally, wildly overpraised). Eastwood, Freeman, and Swank are all pretty much beat up, used up, and about at the end of their ropes – and wouldn’t you know it, these three misfits with no one but each other join together to achieve success beyond their wildest dreams. Actually, the movie I thought of most often while I watched Million Dollar Baby was Finding Neverland. There was a movie that, on the face of it, should have been unbearably sappy, but it was done in a dry-eyed, unsentimental way that ended up earning its moving ending. This one, by contrast, looks like it should have been a dry, unsentimental story, but instead it’s dripping with sap. The closing act is agonizingly long, though it does provide Eastwood with his one good scene.
The movie is insultingly obvious; every part of the closing is set up blatantly in the first hour or so, on the “show the gun in the first act” theory of storytelling. The villains in the movie couldn’t be broader if they were drawn by Disney: Swank’s white-trash family is cartoonishly wicked, and her toughest opponent in the boxing ring is a former East German prostitute (who fights dirty, natch, but what else would you expect from someone who used to sleep with Commies for money?). When Iron Curtain Ho’ enters the ring for the climactic bout, menacingly backlit and accompanied by bass-note, ominous music, she may as well be Ivan Drago.
And that brings us to the glorification of violence. I didn’t see a damn bit of difference between the East German’s “dirty” fighting and Swank’s slamming punches that lift opponents off their feet and send them spinning around before they crash to the canvas (aside from the timing of the punches; the German ho’ just delivers them after the bell). Whenever she decks someone, Swank grins and jumps for joy like she just got asked to the prom – it’s not till a few dozen fights into her career that we see her ask, in what seems like an obligatory scene, if her beat-down opponent is okay (if she’s not, dear sweet Swank might “send her something.” Yeah, I’m sure flowers are gonna make that crushed eye socket all better). And yeah, there are some really disgusting images, like a broken nose being pushed back into place, massive bleeding… you know, I don’t want to think about it.
And I’ve already spent too much time on this mediocre movie. Even if it wins a slew of Oscars – and I already know that there is no justice in this world, or in the Academy Awards, but it will really, really be true if Eastwood beats Martin Scorsese and The Aviator – there’s absolutely no reason to see it.
Random note: Weirdly,
all the trailers before the movie were for horror and suspense movies. Is there really such an overlap between the
audiences for those movies and this one?
Or are there just no other movies coming out?
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