'Million Dollar Baby'

By John Anderson
Newsday

December 15, 2004

Even the seemingly inexhaustible Clint Eastwood probably would admit to having passed the September of his career, but autumn is a good time for taking stock. And what's developed over the years, especially the last decade of his nearly 35 years of film directing, is Eastwood's sense of charity: In a medium where the director is a deity, the former Dirty Harry has morphed from an Old Testament god into a New.

He still has that rigid intolerance of evil, but what distinguishes his films - and is epitomized by the remarkable "Million Dollar Baby" - is a dignity bestowed on even the lowliest of his characters. He may want us to think He thinks things are black and white, but gray has become the strongest color on Eastwood's palette.

Just look at the set-up surrounding the crowd of snakebitten characters populating "Million Dollar Baby" - a boxing movie that's much, much more. It ought to collapse of its own weight. Eastwood himself playing a crusty, disillusioned boxing trainer named Frankie Dunn (as in "done"?). Morgan Freeman as best friend and font of wisdom Eddie "Scrap Iron" Dupris? Even the casting of Hilary Swank, who won an Oscar for playing a girl playing a boy ("Boys Don't Cry") seems too obvious coming in as fighter Maggie Fitzgerald, a hopeful seemingly too old and inexperienced to make it in the fight game, but whose determination and cheer are so tireless they melt even Frankie's wizened heart.

Despite the odds, the whole thing works - from the acting, which is the best these three have ever done, to the fight scenes, which are brutal and short, to the atmosphere of the gym itself: The aroma of sweat socks seems to be wafting off the screen.

Sydney Penny in "Pale Rider," Laura Linney in "Absolute Power" and even Sondra Locke in any one of the half- dozen movies she made with Eastwood, all played daughters or surrogates, providing all the past Eastwood's characters have often needed. The past doesn't have to be articulated, and isn't at all in "Million Dollar Baby," but something went wrong between Frankie and his unseen daughter, and all he has to show for fatherhood is a drawer full of letters marked "return to sender."

So Maggie becomes Frankie's world - his only family, along with Eddie. And family - the family you make versus, say, Maggie's trailer trash kin who sort of ooze out of the woodwork once she starts to make money - is a big part of "Million Dollar Baby," brilliantly scripted by former TV writer Paul Haggis from the stories of F.X. Toole.

What delivers the knockout in "Million Dollar Baby," however, is Eastwood's footwork - it isn't fancy, but the effortless way he shifts his film from one tack to another, never losing either the rhythm or his film's credibility, is the mark of a master. An old master? You wouldn't know it from this film.

(PG-13). Crusty boxing coach is spiritually seduced by a gutsy female fighter. Risk-taking, heartbreaking and one of Clint Eastwood's best. With Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, Hilary Swank, Brian O'Byrne, Margo Martindale. Directed by Clint Eastwood. 2:00 (violence, vulgarity). At area theaters.

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