From this point on, Million Dollar Baby transcends the rules of the genre and shows us, with an unvarnished simplicity, how human beings struggle to come to terms with the unthinkable. And so when the film executes an out-of-nowhere left hook and takes the narrative in a different direction, you can’t help but feel betrayed by Eastwood and screenwriter Paul Haggis for undermining expectations about how this will all turn out. The dynamic between these two is initially a comic one – he plays the crotchety old man to the hilt, while her eager pupil appears oblivious to his act – but in their mutual loneliness, a tender father/daughter bond forged in devotion and loyalty eventually develops. The movie’s central relationship is between Frankie Dunn (Eastwood), a grizzled manager/trainer who owns a run-down gym for wayward pugilists, and Maggie (Swank), the determined young fighter he reluctantly agrees to show the ropes. On the surface, the underdog theme in Million Dollar Baby is a familiar one, the notable difference being that this time the story is set in the unfamiliar world of female boxing. While that may be a lofty description of someone who’s made a movie career as a man of few words, you need only consider Eastwood’s directorial work in Unforgiven, The Bridges of Madison County, Mystic River, and now Million Dollar Baby to appreciate the truth of the statement. Over the years, Eastwood has become the consummate filmmaker, an artist of uncompromising integrity with few equals in a profession seemingly more interested in computer-generated imaging than the depth of human experience. Though he has directed films since the early 1970s – some of them pretty good ( The Outlaw Josey Wales, Pale Rider, and Bird, to name a few) – he’s always been perceived as an actor first and a filmmaker second. Until the last decade or so, the mention of his name first summoned a visualization of a film icon: the squinting loner wandering the barren landscapes of the Old West or a renegade cop dispensing his own brand of justice in the lawless streets of a modern-day frontier town. There shouldn’t be any question about whether Clint Eastwood has earned his place in the pantheon of American cinema.
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