Million Dollar Baby: 2004

Million Dollar Baby is one of the films where I remember watching the Oscars in 2005 and seeing Hilary Swank win for her portrayal of Maggie Fitzgerald, a female boxer, and having no interest in watching the film. Picking up the film at my local library to watch for this blog I had only slightly more interest because I know I'm approaching the end point of watching best picture winners and I'm excited to finally meet my goal. That and Rocky was better than I expected, so I figured another boxing film might be good.

I wouldn't say that Million Dollar Baby is good, but I wouldn't say that it's bad. The film has some interesting moments, and it's not your typical boxing film (spoiler: she doesn't win the title). The story tackles the difficult subject of euthanasia and handled it with grace. The acting is good. Did Swank earn her Oscar? Sure, I think so. It's hard to know for this year as I haven't seen the other nominees (check out the list for Best Actress for the 2005 Oscars), but there were scenes where Swank convincingly showed joy, pain, fear, and more.

For me, there are a few issues with Million Dollar Baby. One is the frame story. Morgan Freeman, who plays Eddie, narrates the film, and until the end you don't know why. When you find out why, it doesn't make much sense. Apparently he's writing a letter to Frankie's daughter to explain why her father was a good man. You know that Frankie has a bad relationship with his daughter, but it's never clear why, so then the letter doesn't have much meaning. I just wasn't invested in Frankie's character because I didn't know enough about him. The other issue I had was length. Some parts of the film just seemed to drag on. As Maggie begins fighting, the montages are quick, but then after her injury, so much of the film drags. Maybe it felt that way because I wanted to know how things would turn out, but that part dragging along with the somewhat unnecessary character Danger (I'm not sure what the point was to having his character in the story) made the second half of the movie go on and on. That slowing down of the story made the ending have less of an impact on me.

I'll leave off with this thought. If you told me that you're going to watch Million Dollar Baby, I wouldn't say you should or shouldn't. But I wouldn't be that interested in knowing your thoughts about it.