'Million Dollar Baby'

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

No "coulda' been ... " about it.

"Million Dollar Baby," Clint Eastwood's sensational boxing movie, is definitely a contender -- not only for any number of Oscar nominations, but also as one of the best films of his long and ever-more-distinguished directorial career.

Warner Bros. Pictures 'Million Dollar Baby' A- The verdict: Eastwood punches out another great film. Director: Clint Eastwood Starring: Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman Run time: 132 minutes Release date: Jan. 7, 2005 Rating: PG-13 for violence, some disturbing images, thematic material and language See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer   -- Trailers require Quicktime Rate "Million Dollar Baby":   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Truth be told, "Million Dollar Baby" is much more than a boxing movie. Though it adheres to the sports-movie tradition of the gruff old trainer and the eager young upstart, the picture uses the familiar boxing milieu -- the dingy gym, the late-night training sessions, the build-up to the Big Bout -- as background for a far more intimate and surprising love story between a surrogate father and a surrogate daughter.

Longtime trainer Frankie Dunn (Eastwood) has an eye for talent but a reluctance to let his fighters move on to a title match. As a result, they usually move on to someone else just when they've reached their peak.

That reluctance is an indication of deeper demons. Frankie writes his estranged daughter every week, and every week the letter comes back marked "return to sender." Meaning, instead of just tearing them up, she takes the trouble to remind him she doesn't want anything to do with him on a weekly basis.

So Frankie spends most of his time reading Yeats; bickering with his old pal, Scrap (Morgan Freeman), a former boxer who looks after Frankie's dilapidated gym; and going to daily Mass so he can drive the young priest crazy with rhetorical questions that start out comparing God with a box of Rice Krispies.

Maggie (Hilary Swank) is a self-described hillbilly, fleeing a trailer-load of trashy, uncaring and selfish relatives. She wants to box because it's the only thing that has ever felt good to her. And she wants Frankie to train her.

But he won't because he thinks lady boxing is a freak show. When she protests she's tough, he sneers, "Girlie tough" and advises her to go home and buy a deep-fat fryer and some Oreos. Eventually, of course, her persistence, her guts and some nudging from Scrap get Frankie to change his mind.

So far, so "Rocky." And dozens of other fight movies. But "Million Dollar Baby" has a last-act haymaker that changes everything, detouring into something far darker, far more complex.

Over the years, Eastwood has honed his spare, chalk-body-outline directorial style into something far richer. He isn't interested in the slo-mo blood flow and the backlit sweat of a "Raging Bull." Instead, "Baby" has the terse American muscularity and focus of a Hemingway short story, without the writer's self-conscious bravado. Eastwood has nothing to prove to anyone, and his direction echoes his character's advice about using a punching bag: "It's not about hitting it hard. It's about hitting it good."

Eastwood hits it good everywhere you look, but especially with his actors. Drawing on some of the raw-boned intensity and redneck swagger of her Oscar-winning performance in "Boys Don't Cry," but with a softer edge, Swank is utterly appealing. And she could be on her way to a second Academy Award.

Freeman has never won an Oscar -- another of the academy's great embarrassments. He invests Scrap with the dignity, warmth, humor and wisdom we've come to expect from him, and his knowing voice-over narration is reminiscent of "The Shawshank Redemption," another Oscar-worthy -- and Oscar-snubbed -- portrayal. When he and Eastwood get into an argument over old socks, it's like taking a crash course in Minimalist Acting 101.

Eastwood's patented less-is-more minimalism provides Frankie's core, but his performance takes on many more colors -- ones we're not used to seeing from the lanky actor. He's fond of Maggie, proud of her, even affectionate with her (Where art thou, Dirty Harry?). And when he quotes a line from Yeats' "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" -- "And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow" -- it's as if we're listening to Eastwood talking about himself. About how, over the past 50 years, against anyone's early expectations, he has become a grand old master of the cinema. There's some John Ford in this movie. Some Howard Hawks, too.

At one point, Frankie notes that "everyone's got a particular number of fights in him." That probably goes for films, too. Let's hope Eastwood has lot and lots left in him. After all, he's only 74.