Spoilers Ahoy. Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here. No Exit. Boxing is Backwards. And So On.

The point of no return-- the moment in which the fact that, no matter how often it might threaten to do otherwise, the film will never become genuinely worthwhile draws into unmistakable, sharp relief-- in director-producer-actor-composer Clint Eastwood's latest film, Million Dollar Baby, arrives just around the halfway mark. While Million Dollar Baby only sporadically hints at greatness up until this point, it's in a conversation between Eddie "Scrap" Dupuis (Morgan Freeman, playing "Morgan Freeman as Red from The Shawshank Redemption") and Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank, better than the material by an almost impossible margin) that the film's numerous failings so overwhelmingly come to outweigh its few positive attributes and watching the film grow only more incompetent becomes an outright chore. In this scene, Scrap tells Maggie about his history with the man who is now her boxing trainer / manager, Frankie Dunn (Eastwood, not awful but sounding ever more like Yoda to the point of distraction). He informs Maggie of Frankie's lingering, if unfounded since he was not in a position to act otherwise, guilt over Scrap's having lost his eye. Scrap then tells Maggie that, in the years since, Frankie has never mentioned the incident.

Which would certainly be an appropriate, if clichéd and obvious, revelation of Frankie's character. Except that it ignores the simple fact that Frankie and Scrap had an uncomfortable argument-- especially memorable as one of the few well-written passages in the entire screenplay, actually-- regarding the loss of Scrap's eye back in the film's first reel. Now, a single continuity error doesn't make or break a film. But what this particular error speaks to in Million Dollar Baby, beyond its basic sloppiness, is that it forces obvious themes and drama at the expense of internal logic, character development, and respect for its audience. It's a pandering, overwritten mess that's permanently grounded by weight it should never have attempted to bear. This scene-- in which Scrap presents Maggie with the opportunity and the rationale for leaving Frankie for a more lucrative manager-- exists only to set in motion the series of unfortunate events that inevitably lead to the even-more-unfortunate events of its otherwise unearned final act.

It's a cheat, in other words. And, following this scene-- if I have to tell you that Maggie decides to stay with Frankie, then you've never seen a single movie before-- the grotesqueries and the awards-baiting of Million Dollar Baby's much-lauded final act could not possibly be more predictable or more pretentious. And that's the thing, really, about Eastwood's work: it's pretentious to an almost unbearable degree, but, for reasons that I understand but find entirely unjustified, no one is ever willing to call him out on it. His previous masterclass in overacting and terrible writing, Mystic River, includes a character who makes phone calls but who never speaks. That he can get away with such heavy-handedness is infuriating, and it speaks to everything I deplore about the "prestige" film and about most of Eastwood's post-Unforgiven output, in particular.

It seemed as though Eastwood's direction hit a nadir with Mystic River, but he further bottoms-out on Million Dollar Baby. He's never proven that he understands the basic principles of composition-- his films consist of lengthy static shots in which his characters are either centered directly in the frame, if delivering a monologue, or face each other at full "scope" distance in conversation. He mixes in just one or two more difficult shots-- in Million Dollar Baby, it comes within the first five minutes, in a nice zoom-in on an injury Frankie has prepped-- in an attempt to placate film snobs like me who expect a little more from someone regarded as a bona fide auteur, but his direction is both plodding and uninspired.

And, more often than not, terribly lit. Million Dollar Baby is a dark film, and not exclusively in terms of its themes. Frankie's gym is sufficiently run-down a set to give the needed street cred, but it isn't, say, dingy. Instead, it appears to have been lit with a single 40 Watt bulb, suspended by an exposed wire hanging from the center of the ceiling. Throughout Million Dollar Baby, characters speak with three-quarters of their bodies obscured in shadow. And for what? It isn't a decision that serves to foreground whatever underlying themes haven't already been brought to the surface by Paul Haggis' sledgehammer-subtle screenplay. Million Dollar Baby is dark because Eastwood's never understood the function of effective lighting, nor has he worked with a DP with the professional wherewithal to challenge his pointless aesthetic.

Eastwood also finds himself woefully overmatched in his attempts to shoot Million Dollar Baby's numerous fight sequences, to the point that these sequences, but for a single inspired moment of brutality in which Frankie re-sets Maggie's broken nose, are robbed of any lasting visceral impact. During one of Maggie's bludgeonings of several European fighters, the boxing commentator remarks that she's "really pummeling" her opponent-- a fine observation in and of itself, except that the audience doesn't ever see any of this action. Most of the fight sequences are limited by Eastwood's clear discomfort in using a steadicam to track the fights-- and all credit to Swank and her opponents for their efforts in replicating the genuine article-- in that the fighters are often entirely obscured either by the ropes or by the occasional wayward spectator who happens to block the camera. There's also an overuse of audience reaction shots that suggests, if nothing else, that Eastwood may have realized his limitations in shooting the fight sequences proper.

I may have hated Seabiscuit, but at least it came alive during its racing sequences. That Million Dollar Baby's boxing scenes are among its weakest-- at least in terms of directorial style-- is an inexcusable failure.

But if Million Dollar Baby is poorly directed, its greatest liability remains in its godawful screenplay. The film is loosely anchored in what doesn't reveal itself as a framing device until the final two minutes-- and it's a framing device too moronic to be pretentious, though it's not far off from Kevin Bacon's phone-mute wife-- via Scrap's intrusive, horribly written voiceover narration. In a pure aesthetic sense, Morgan Freeman possesses a lovely voice, a deep baritone just sufficiently graveled that it conveys a feeling of warmth and comfort. It's a soothing voice. It suggests that the man speaking through it is uncommonly wise. Within the first fifteen minutes of Million Dollar Baby, during which Scrap prattles off such bon mots as "Boxing is backward" and "Sometimes a boxer's cuts are too deep, too close to the bone to heal," I wanted nothing more than for Morgan Freeman to shut the hell up.

The larger points of Million Dollar Baby are so patently obvious even on their own terms-- to choose but one recurring trope of many, Frankie's daughter, a more different variation on the phone-mute, returns all his letters unopened as a result of some thankfully never-revealed offense, and Maggie, to absolutely no one's surprise, has issues over having lost her dad-- that Scrap's narration is insufferably didactic. It's bad enough that the characters speak the film's larger thematic issues verbatim as lines of dialogue-- Maggie tells Frankie, "I ain't got nobody but you, Frankie," to which he replies, "Well, at least you've got me." Honestly.-- but to have them reiterated so heavy-handedly is the kind of screenwriting I find most loathsome. Paul Haggis-- and partner-in-crime Eastwood, as the one giving life to his stupid, stupid words-- doesn't think the audience is smart enough to follow Million Dollar Baby. It's a film of wading-pool depth as is, but Haggis and Eastwood-- and, inexplicably, the community of film critics-- insist on telling you otherwise. And if you don't agree, they'll browbeat you into submission using Morgan Freeman's voicebox.

Of course, since the film is sloppy, Scrap's narration decreases nearly tenfold following that point-of-no-return scene, only to pick up again full-steam in the final fifteen minutes. Which, given the content of the scenes on which he doesn't offer his commentary, actively undermines the legitimacy of that framing device. Though, in Scrap's protracted absence, few wistful sidelong glances or otherwise quiet epiphanies go unfellated by Eastwood's dreary minimalist score. Million Dollar Baby does precious few things well.

The film invents conflict where none rightfully exists. Frankie, for instance, openly harasses his priest, Father Horvak (Brian F. O'Byrne, awful, though he's apparently a Tony Award winner), who notes because Frankie obviously doesn't know this about himself that Frankie attends mass on a daily basis-- though Frankie's comments and attitude convey an open disrespect of the actual institution of the church. During the final act, then, it strikes as particularly atonal and nasty that the screenplay attempts to position Father Horvak individually and the Catholic church as a whole as a villain, after the priest takes what the apologist liberal screenplay dictates is the obviously incorrect position on the complex moral issue of voluntary euthanasia. Why confront the complexities of such an issue-- though, in all honesty, the issue is so hastily tacked-on that it's impossible to view as anything other than self-important awards-baiting-- in a manner that allows for actual debate when it's easier to have a clearly delineated villain? Million Dollar Baby would still be too flawed to be a great film, but it would be a far better one if it ended just after Maggie wakes up to the realization that she'll never fight again.

This is to say nothing of the way in which Million Dollar Baby handles a character-- a term used in the loosest possible sense here-- with an obvious developmental disability, Danger Barch (Jay Baruchel, embarrassing himself after a nice, brief turn as the kid who doesn't OD in Roger Avary's The Rules of Attraction), a fixture in Frankie's gym. Scrap describes Danger as "all heart." The implication, of course, being "no brain." That Danger is used repeatedly as comic relief in a film that absolutely doesn't need it and that the character exists entirely to give Scrap's character arc some kind of half-formed closure-- and the audience a quasi-happy ending-- is contemptible. Whenever Danger was on screen, I actively hated Million Dollar Baby, because it's an amoral type of cruel, and that's the only type of cruelty the film effectively conveys.

Danger, being the afterthought that the developmentally disabled are so frequently in film as in life, thankfully is not on screen often. Maggie Fitzgerald, however, is. And those are the moments, as mentioned, when Million Dollar Baby occasionally threatens to be the brilliant film it's marketed as. I don't know what it says about Hilary Swank that both of her jaw-dropping, career-redefining performances have been of women who either have been robbed of (here) or have voluntarily waived (her justifiably Oscar-winning turn in Boys Don't Cry) their female sexuality in ways that are nothing short of subversive of traditional gender politics. Frankly, she's never given the impression in her interviews that she's either bright or progressive enough to be doing that on purpose. But that in no way diminishes the magnitude of what she accomplishes in Million Dollar Baby. In spite of the stereotypes-- Scrap describes her family early on as "trash" and no stereotype of the rural South is left untouched when they finally and inevitably turn up-- and frequently awful dialogue with which she's saddled, Maggie Fitzgerald breathes as a fully realized character, and that's entirely Swank's doing. My one hope going into Million Dollar Baby was that, even if the film were as unbearable as Mystic River, I wanted Swank's performance to live up to its hype, because I just didn't want to believe that a performance as affecting as her work in Boys Don't Cry was a pure fluke. Even knowing the caliber of work of which she's capable, however, I was stunned by her performance in Million Dollar Baby. Like Daniel-Day Lewis in Gangs of New York, she makes an otherwise awful film worth sitting through at least once. Which is perhaps the highest praise I could offer.

So, Swank's phenomenal. Eastwood's performance is fine, and his eyes are far more expressive than his increasingly nails-on-a-chalkboard voice. Freeman phones it in, and rightfully so. All of which is to say that, as a three-person acting ensemble, Million Dollar Baby trumps the ham-chewing hysterics of Mystic River. Though, as is the case on Million Dollar Baby, I'm in a distinct minority who's utterly unimpressed.

During Million Dollar Baby's third reel, Scrap and Maggie share a second private conversation, during which they briefly discuss Frankie's character. This prompts Scrap to remark, "He does like to repeat himself." Since the remainder of the film that surrounds it is so start-to-finish inept, the comment resonates as an unintentional auto-critique. From the sluggish pacing and the atrocious dialogue to the awards-baiting "weight" of the subject matter and the pitch-black lighting, it's impossible to view Million Dollar Baby without thinking that, Swank's performance notwithstanding, it's just more of Eastwood's ongoing insistence that he be taken seriously as a filmmaker, as though Unforgiven hadn't already legitimately earned him such respect. And if the second verse is the same as the first, Eastwood had better have one killer hook waiting in the chorus, because my patience for films like Million Dollar Baby is wearing dangerously thin.


Recommended:
No