Movie: Million Dollar Baby

Finally got around to watching another Netflix movie (thanks to repeats during World Series season). Last night it was “Million Dollar Baby”, the boxing movie starring Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman and Hilary Swank.

I love Clint Eastwood. Seriously – in the past 15-20 years I don’t think he’s disappointed me with any of the movies he’s done that I’ve managed to see. I’m extremely partial to “A Perfect World”, starring Kevin Costner. I think that’s an extremely underrated movie that is powerful and wonderful and sad all at the same time. And he was in charge of one of my favorite westerns of all time, “Unforgiven”.

So with “Baby” I knew it would be a quiet movie, a plodding movie building to an amazing end – that’s what Eastwood movies do. I also knew going in that since Hilary Swank got all kinds of recognition as well as an Oscar for her role that she probably died in the movie. Don’t most female Oscar winners win for characters who die or have hardship in a movie? I could be wrong, but it feels that way. Anyway, so I knew that was going to happen.

But I did NOT expect her accident to come a full 30 minutes before the end of the movie. It completely shocked me. And saddened me, since I admit I really liked the tenacious character of Maggie.

Did the movie deserve to win Best Picture? Well, it was up against The Aviator, which was a treat. I was up against “Sideways” which was charming. It was up against “Ray”, which I haven’t seen yet. And it was up against “Finding Neverland” which was magical. I actually think all these movies were on par with each other – no one outshone the other. So should it have won? Sure, why not?

4 Yeats poems out of five.