Million Dollar Baby
Warner Brothers
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman
The Verdict: Oscar buzz and awards surrounding “Baby” lead up to a dissapointing picture.
1 1/2 stars out of 5 stars
Ding ding! Ladies and gentleman, in the red carpet corner, weighing in at a taxing 137 minutes with an excess of 6 major Academy Award nominations … it’s the critical darling poised to upset the Oscars, Clint Eastwood’s down-and-dirty underdog boxing melodrama, the one, the only, “Million Dollar Baby”!!
And in the very very green corner, green as in green-eyed monster, Chomping at the bit, it’s “The Aviator,” “Finding Neverland,” “Ray,” and Sideways,” each one a Best Picture candidate alongside “Baby,” each one out to prove it’s leaner, better, and more entertaining than Eastwood’s latest pedigreed Oscar bait.
Okay, the opponents are in their corners, and this Best Picture title match is underway. Ding ding! Round one! Oh my goodness, ladies and gentlemen, it’s a melee already. The candidates are all swinging and connecting, one shot right after the other, racking up critics’ prizes and Golden Globes left and right. But hang on a second-here comes “Baby!” “Baby” rears back, takes a huge swing at its opponents, and … MISSES! “Million Dollar Baby” has thrown its first punch of the Oscar race and hit nothing but air. But what’s this? The other fighters have all hit the canvas! “Ray” down! “Sideways” down! “Neverland” down! The punch didn’t even connect! Ladies and gentlemen, “Million Dollar Baby” stands tall as the ref starts the count, and all I can say from ringside is that it looks like the fix is in. How can “Baby” get away with this?
The ref has counted 10, and now Eastwood and co-stars Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman have stormed the ring. And who’s that behind them? Why, it’s screenwriter Paul Haggis. The “Baby” team huddles near center ring, and what’s this? Oh, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve seen some shameless displays at awards ceremonies past, but this takes the cake.
Eastwood and company are being showered with Oscars from some unseen place above the ring. This is ridiculous. Freeman grabs one. Swank grabs one. Eastwood grabs TWO-one for directing and one for acting. Haggis scrambles for one that’s floating close to “Sideways” screenwriters Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor. And crashing down to land with a thud, there’s a giant Best Picture Oscar. Oh, folks, it looks like this fight was over before it began. How did this happen? Why? No one outside the Oscar fight circuit can know for sure, but one thing this critic could glean from his ringside seat is that “Baby” may look like a champion, talk like a champion even walk like a champion, but in an honest street fight against better films, it wouldn’t stand a chance.
Countless critics and awards organizations around the country posit that Eastwood’s latest is even better than last year’s lauded “Mystic River.” They’ve doled out countless four-star reviews for the film and heaped award-worthy praise on Eastwood, Swank, and Freeman. At this point, I’ll again ask, “Why?”
“Million Dollar Baby” is the kind of super-hyped awards season freight train that, as it lurched creakily by, inspired this critic to wonder, “Did I miss something? That’s it?!”
Inspired by F.X. Toole’s story “Rope Burns,” “Baby” tells a simple story.
Maggie (the eternally fresh-faced Swank), a white-trash 30-something, itches to prove herself as a boxer. After a fight night, she corners Frankie, a crusty old cutman/manager (crusty old Eastwood), and asks if he’ll train her. In true Eastwood fashion, Frankie tells her she’s too old and dismisses her as a “girlie,” and Frankie “don’t train girlies.” If only the story ended there.
Frankie owns a boxing gym, which he runs with old pal Scrap (Freeman, all frowns and growls with a glass eye and a hobo hat), a former fighter whose last match cost him his eye. One day Maggie shows up at the gym, where Frankie promptly shoots her down again, but her spirit and intensity catch Scrap’s good eye, and he starts giving her tips and loaning her equipment under Frankie’s nose.
You may think you know where this is all leading, but you’d be absolutely right. If there’s a major surprise in “Baby,” it’s that there are almost no surprises. Scrap makes Frankie cave in and train Maggie, Maggie’s determination wins Frankie’s heart, Maggie possesses a devastating right hand that levels opponents in the first round and wins her a title shot in Las Vegas. And that gets you up to the hour-and-a-half mark. Any questions? The film’s final third hinges on a major plot twist that most critics (myself included) are wary to reveal, and “Baby” scores most of its best quick jabs as a result of said twist. But even then, the drama seems stale, the revelations tired, and the technique heavy-handed. Even when the script deviates from the usual sports movie formula, it holds true to a path of clich after obvious clich.
Scrap’s laconic narration is so dry and hard-boiled it feels bizarrely imported from a Phillip Marlowe detective caper. There’s Frankie’s estrangement from his daughter (he mails her a letter every week, which always returns to his doorstep unopened). There’s Frankie and Scrap’s affectionate but colorless verbal sparring (over everything from cheeseburgers to the holes in Scrap’s socks). There’s the wispy, semi-retarded hillbilly kid who hangs around the gym flailing his bony arms and proclaiming himself the next champion of the world (no one has the heart to tell him otherwise). It all feels too processed to elicit much interest.
Eastwood has long been cited for his subtlety behind the camera, but this film shouldn’t bolster that reputation. Yes, Eastwood is a master of pacing and visual economy, but his workmanlike approach doesn’t elevate the dull source material above well-produced soap opera. As for subtlety, there’s nothing subtle in the way Eastwood presents one of Maggie’s opponents as the ultimate, unvarnished evil in the female boxing world. And there’s no excuse for the broad-strokes portrayal of Maggie’s family as a passel of slack-jawed cartoon crackers.
It’s dismaying, especially in the wake of the powerful acting duels of “Mystic River,” that Eastwood doesn’t get more expansive performances out of Swank and the wonderful Freeman. Swank certainly worked herself into splendid physical condition for her role, but she could play the hayseed-with-a-heart-of-gold part in her sleep. Same goes for Freeman, who’s fine as both Frankie’s foil and as the gym’s decaying boxing sage, but the actor has played well-meaning authority figures in more films than this critic can count. What’s Oscar-worthy about one more?
If there’s a performance to write home about, indeed if there’s a reason to see the film at all, it’s Eastwood’s own. Clint’s been playing steely-eyed types his whole career, and his orneriness gets deeper, more believable with each passing year. But this time there’s more going on behind Eastwood’s eyes than his usual no-nonsense man of action. Frankie is a pained, failed man, beaten but not down, plagued by enough regret to sink a battleship but still somehow afloat after all his years. When Frankie finally opens his heart to Maggie, the audience opens its heart to Eastwood with an abandon that may lead to some genuine tears in the final reel.
Would “Million Dollar Baby” have played as stagnantly before all of its Oscar hype? Probably. Hype, after all, only enhanced this critic’s adoration for Martin Scorsese’s richly entertaining “The Aviator” and for Alexander Payne’s brilliantly observed “Sideways” (the real Best Picture of the year, for those keeping score). When hype raises your expectations for a film, imagine your satisfaction when the film lives up to the hype. On the other hand, when a film falls disastrously short of its hype, the result leaves an emptiness in a viewer, a bitter taste in his or her mouth all but impossible to eradicate.
No matter how you slice it, “Baby” is slow, dark, overlong and overly familiar. Even if it had never been nominated for a single award, this is a film that carries itself with a self-seriousness that is chafing at best and repellent at worst.