World Famous Comics: Million Dollar Baby (Full Screen Edition)
Million Dollar Baby (Full Screen Edition)
Starring: Jay Baruchel, Marcus Chait, Mike Colter, Joe D'Angerio, Morgan Eastwood Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) Binding: DVD Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC Label: Warner Home Video Number of Items: 2 Region Code: 1 Release Date: July 12, 2005 Running Time: 132 minutes Theatrical Release Date: January 28, 2005
Product Description: "I DON'T TRAIN GIRLS" trainer Frankie Dunn growls. But something's different about the spirited boxing hopeful who shows up daily at Dunn's gym. All she wants is a fighting chance. Clint Eastwood plays Dunn and directs produces and composes music for this acclaimed multi-award-winning tale of heart hope and family. Hilary Swank plays resilient Maggie determined not to abandon her one dream. And Morgan Freeman is Scrap gym caretaker and counterpoint to Dunn's crustiness. Grab your dreams and come out swinging.Running Time: 132 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 012569593220
Amazon.com: Clint Eastwood's 25th film as a director, Million Dollar Baby stands proudly with Unforgiven and Mystic River as the masterwork of a great American filmmaker. In an age of bloated spectacle and computer-generated effects extravaganzas, Eastwood turns an elegant screenplay by Paul Haggis (adapted from the book Rope Burns: Stories From the Corner by F.X. Toole, a pseudonym for veteran boxing manager Jerry Boyd) into a simple, humanitarian example of classical filmmaking, as deeply felt in its heart-wrenching emotions as it is streamlined in its character-driven storytelling. In the course of developing powerful bonds between "white-trash" Missouri waitress and aspiring boxer Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), her grizzled, reluctant trainer Frankie Dunn (Eastwood), and Frankie's best friend and training-gym partner Eddie "Scrap-Iron" Dupris (Morgan Freeman), 74-year-old Eastwood mines gold from each and every character, resulting in stellar work from his well-chosen cast. Containing deep reserves of love, loss, and the universal desire for something better in hard-scrabble lives, Million Dollar Baby emerged, quietly and gracefully, as one of the most acclaimed films of 2004, released just in time to earn an abundance of year-end accolades, all of them well-deserved. --Jeff Shannon
As Good as the Hype I finally saw this the other day for the first time and have to admit it lived up to its hype. Million Dollar Baby is a great film and Hillary Swank is a magnificent actress. Her performance in these frames was as strong as it was in Boys Don't Cry. As far as her relationship with Eastwood's Dunn goes their bond was totally believable as a union between a daughterless father and a fatherless daughter. I know that some of my fellow conservatives were sickened by the ending. Frankly, I wasn't. While I would not have done what the main character (Eastwood) did, his actions did not ruin the film for me. I typically don't judge theatrical releases by how much they reflect my own core beliefs though. Regardless of values, Million Dollar Baby deserves its reputation. It is a superior drama and--luckily--not a melodrama.
A masterpiece about the cruelty of social survival This film is beautifully strong but immensely cruel. The strength of the film holds in one single fact: anyone can always win one battle provided they are trained properly and they are managed properly. That does not mean they will win the world title but they can always try and win one victory. How far will they go, no one knows, no one can tell. Luckily, otherwise there would be no meaning in trying. But the cruelty is all contained too in one fact: the end of such a fight for the top title is lost sooner or later if the contender does not learn how to cheat with life and the rules or to be aware the other one may cheat with life and the rules and this contender must be ready to resist these attempts. And that's just what the "boss" forgot to teach his fighter. And she was the victim of the viciousness of the champion who did something wrong for the third time causing severe damage and eventually death. If you just concentrate on these two elements this film is a masterpiece that deserves all the prizes it got. If you want to go slightly farther and sort out other elements like the heavy reference to God and religion, you will fall into something very trite, like the priest advising the "boss" not to meddle with the fallen fighter's desire to die because then he, the boss, would not be able to come to terms with himself. This answer is so narrow-minded, so egotistic in the name of God. I respect the divine command not because I respect or fear God, but because my disobeying this command may make me unhappy. On these sides issues and questions Clint Eastwood is definitely less clear. But the cruelty of this boxing against all people involved in the business is mastered in an admirable way. You win or you die and if you lose you have to die, at least die away into non-existing.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Worst Move I Ever Saw Despite the fact that Hillary Swank is a beautiful, super-talented actress, this movie was the worst I have ever seen. I say this because of the terrible evil that it is clearly trying to promote, namely the murder of anybody who is physically handicapped in some way. The mind of the character played by Hillary Swank was completely intact, yet instead of taking loving care of her, Clint Eastwood took advantage of her physical helplessness by murdering her. This is left-wing propaganda at its most shameful.
Some people just don't get it. Before I start, let me distinguish "story" from "plot" via the famous example proffered by E.M. Forster.
Story: "The King died, and then the Queen died."
Plot: "The King died, and then the Queen died of heartache."
What separates plot from story is the element of causality. Story refers to events and plot implies causal connections that "drive" the narrative. Although plot generally exists in even the most avant-garde filmmaking or purest examples of neo-Realism, despite their pretensions to the contrary, it is restricted to a level of simplicity. Films like MDB are about events that happen to people and how these people react to these events. They are character driven, sometimes event driven, but not plot driven. But whatever plot causality does exist is usual extremely important.
With this out of the way, let me quote one viewer's criticism of this wonderful film:
"Am I the only one who found the ending to be completely contrived, if not nonsensical? This has nothing to do with the fact that she died, and that it was sad. I have no problem with sad endings, when they MAKE SENSE. The thing I don't understand is WHY she had to die? In what way did it help the narrative, the plot, the story, or the lesson to be drawn from it? Here we have a story about a girl, her dream, and her struggle to live out that dream, despite her horrible family, and all the odds being against her, and as she is about to realize even the tiniest portion of that dream: BLAM, you're paralyzed... Why that? To me it seemed like it came TOTALLY out of left-field. [I must interject: he's got the answer right in front of his own nose and he can't see it!! - ADM] It was like Eastwood had this great movie going, had everything worked out perfectly and suddenly realized that it was getting too long and he needed to end it and that's the first thing he could come up with.
"It just didn't make sense in relation to the rest of the story. Now some people will say 'well that's life, sometimes *beep* happens.' And yeah, that is life, but MDB isn't life, it's a movie. Her injury seemed totally useless and left me wondering where in the hell Eastwood pulled that idea from.
"Mystic River = Eastwood movie with a SAD, SAD, SAD ending, but one that MADE SENSE."
First off, the so-called ending is actually the final third of the film. So stop calling it "the ending"! Second, note the emphasis on WHY and MAKING SENSE. This is one viewer who is stuck on plot and thinks that if an incident does not "advance" the plot in some overtly obvious manner then it is somehow faulty. As if the incidents and characters are there to serve the narrative rather than the other way around. The final portion of the film wasn't there to "help the narrative." The movie is ABOUT this part of the story, right from the very beginning. Yes, sometimes "*beep* happens," and that's life, and some movies are about life, as opposed to those that are about car crashes or explosions or Adam Sandler making his girlfriends laugh or Robin Williams impersonating a woman. If the controversial plot turn were arbitrary, then it would have sunk the film; life can be random, good art cannot be random. If it seeks to create a story that reflects life's randomness, there must be an underlying logic at work, and in Million Dollar Baby there certainly is. Here we have a strong, determined woman who dragged herself out of a dead-end life to achieve heights of athletic fame and accomplishments as a prizefighter. As is so often the case in life much of our fates are left to chance, and in a single, random, fateful moment in the ring (not her bathtub or street corner or local candy shop; i.e., there is a continuity to these events that MAKES SENSE), all that she had built for herself was taken away. Now she's left in a position where her pride and integrity are compromised, because she was once a great fighter and she is now a vegetable who feels she no longer has a reason to live -- and so she turns for help to the manager with whom she had her most intimate relationship. The man who helped her become what she was now has to ponder whether his responsibility to her is to help her live or help her die. (Unlike some of those who both love and hate this film, I don't think it makes a definite "pro-euthanasia" stance.) In other words, people who are in the position of begging for a mercy killing have lives that preceded their predicament, and Million Dollar Baby lets us experience that. Of course, grasping this requires some mental dexterity not possessed by those whose perspectives are purely linear. And those who think that movies are not life, "just movies" (whatever that means) will be completely lost. Sure, art can't do it the same way life can, but I think I covered that already earlier in this paragraph.
In other words, the story of Million Dollar Baby is more about two characters and a relationship than the construct we call "plot." Some movies are very plot-driven, and there is nothing innately inferior in that. Some of them are great films. They can, in their own way, reveal just as much about our external or interior lives. I even like outright action movies when I feel there's creativity and wit on display. I think Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan) is a great American writer. I don't think any work of "literary fiction" has captured so incisively the workings of our sexual sub-conscious as Dracula. I have a soft spot for John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China, for crying out loud. I mention these seemingly irrelevant and diffuse trivia lest I be accused of "highbrow" elitism.
Many works of art are great because they help us understand human nature better (although I don't agree with another viewer who feels that great films try "to improve the world at least a little bit"; some works of art may try to do this, but I feel this is incidental to what makes them great). Million Dollar Baby falls into this latter category of art that sheds light on what William Faulkner called "the human heart in conflict with itself."
Not my cup of tea For me, this was sort of a waste of 2 hours. Some of the things were predictable, but I wasn't sure how it was all going to play out. I just couldn't connect with the characters all that much. I have really tried to like Hilary Swank as an actress, but for some reason I just haven't found her in a role that seems to capture an emotional captivating role.
Clint Eastwood is always great, and so is Morgan Freeman they were great in this film. This was a touching story, but I feel it could have been more gripping for me with a different leading female, or some background music, I don't really recall any, and I just watched it last night.
There are many positive reviews, and to many this probably was a good film, I just didn't feel it.
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