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Million Dollar Baby
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman
Produced and Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Running Time: 116 minutes
With "Million Dollar Baby,'' Clint Eastwood continues to take one of the most fascinating artistic journeys in American
film. Eastwood has travelled far from the slit-eyed, tight-lipped gunslinger he played in Sergio Leone's classic westerns,
but one constant in his work has been a jazz-analogous riffing on America's most enduring archetypes.
In his latest, an adaptation of a hard-boiled 2000 story by F.X. Toole, the actor-director takes a dark look at another
venerable archetype, the prize fighter, and in the process has created a masterpiece of American pulp noir. A short description
of "Million Dollar Baby'' makes the film sound like a variation on "Rocky'' but here Frankie Dunn (Eastwood), the
grizzled owner of the hellish-sounding Los Angeles gym "The Hit Pit,'' refuses to train a "girlie''. But hardworking
female boxer Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) won't take no for an answer. A born loser with a trailer-park twang in her voice,
Maggie first wins over Frankie's only friend and confidant, the half-blind ex-fighter and gym manager Eddie "Scrap-Iron''
Dupris (a note-perfect Morgan Freeman).
Frankie relents reluctantly, begging Maggie always to protect herself in the ring. Miraculously, she turns out to be that
fabled figure: the first female boxer to have the potential to become the sport's "million dollar baby.'' She also turns
out to be the beloved daughter Frankie has been longing for.
When Frankie isn't displaying a slyly comic attitude in sparring conversations with Eddie or growling at the fighters,
he reads the poems of William Butler Yeats, studies Gaelic and goes to Mass every day, where he lingers to harangue the young
priest (Brian O'Byrne) with theological questions about "the whole one-God three-God thing.'' Frankie has a daughter
from whom he has been estranged and, like William Munny of "Unforgiven,'' he has a terrible secret in his past.
For anyone wondering when Swank was going to produce a worthy follow-up to her 1999 Academy Award-winning performance
in "Boys Don't Cry,'' here it is, and it's a heartbreaker. Her Maggie is a genuine, homegrown American heroine, a humbly
born, rough-hewn beauty willing to stake everything and literally take a beating to raise herself up from the gutter.
But this is no simple rags-to-riches tale (Toole's story was adapted by Emmy Award-winner Paul Haggis). Halfway through
the action, the film takes a turn into the darkness and becomes a physical and spiritual contest for Frankie's and Maggie's
souls. As was once said of Akira Kurosawa, Eastwood's work now stands outside of time and fashion. "Million Dollar Baby,''
which follows hard upon his monumental 2003 drama ``Mystic River,'' has roots in the 1950s and '60s American B-movies of such
masters as Eastwood's mentor Don Siegel (Dirty Harry) and Robert Aldrich (Kiss Me Deadly). But Eastwood reinvigorates the
genre with the classiest cast, music and black-on-black cinematography (by Mystic River's Tom Stern) you've ever seen or heard.
Freeman, who also narrated "The Shawshank Redemption'' to great effect, assumes that task here, supplying "Million
Dollar Baby'' with a resonant background tone as evocative and haunting as the literal music Eastwood composed for the film.
Eastwood and Freeman handle their wryly comic scenes with consummate skill. Eastwood is no less assured, and often devastating,
in heart-wrenchingly emotional outbursts.
The actor's 'fiercely minimalist' style has evolved into a gruffly masculine expressiveness we have seen in his William
Munny and Robert Kincaid in "The Bridges of Madison County,'' the ability to express emotional anguish and spiritual
agony by striking a few notes with perfect clarity. Eastwood reminds us that suffering has a masculine side. Frankie shares
spiritual chromosomes with the tormented males of novelist Graham Greene, if not John Bunyan. Even his view of winning reeks
of tough-guy pessimism: "Winners are simply willing to do what losers won't.'' Frankie is a sinner wrestling with the
devil for his soul. That he is also a 'cut man', someone prized in boxing circles for his ability to staunch the flow of blood,
is one of the film's supreme ironies.
Someone once observed that half of directing is casting, and Eastwood - who has recently surrounded himself with such
talents as Freeman, Swank, Kevin Bacon, Tim Robbins, Marcia Gay Harden and Sean Penn - has learned that lesson and then some.
That he has sequentially created two such dark visions of America may have something to do with the state of his psyche at
age of 74 and that continent's national consciousness during wartime.
With his adaptation of Dennis Lehane's "Mystic River'' and now "Million Dollar Baby,'' Eastwood has gazed into
the soul of America and found it in deep distress. His film is outstanding, masterly and magnificent on every level.
Oceans Twelve
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon, Vincent Cassel, Robbie Coltrane, Eddie
Izzard
With a script by newcomer George Nofli tailored to fit this Ocean's Eleven cast reunion with some new faces, Soderbergh's
treatment, a visual that travels over various European locations like an old Peter Stuyvesant cigarette advertisement, O12
offers more twists than an Alpine motorway.
There's no point really in trying to keep up with who's conning who, so it's best just to relax and enjoy the screen appeal
of the new Rat Pack. The plot doesn't make sense and I'm not sure that it's meant to. Soderbergh, who proved he knows his
way around this sort of material with his brilliant "Traffic", underplays the tension for a lighter touch.
Immaculately dressed and groomed George Clooney and Brad Pitt, and cohorts Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, the amusing Elliot
Gould, Andy Garcia, Bernie Mac, Don Cheadle, etc, are joined by newcomers to this cast reunion: the excellent Catherine Zeta-Jones,
as beautifully gowned Europol detective Isabel, who has had an earlier fling with Pitt's Rusty character; and French heavy
Vincent Cassel, as Tolour, an ultra-flexible master thief who moonlights as The Night Fox.
Things take off when Benedict (Garcia) tracks down Danny Ocean (Clooney) with revenge on his mind and makes it plain he
wants the return of the $160 million stolen by the gang in Las Vegas three years earlier (dig out your dvd of Ocean's Eleven
for all those details). The Big O, contemplating his "second third-year" anniversary with Tess (Roberts), rounds
up his associates and they head to Amsterdam and Rome planning to steal a jewel-encrusted Faberge egg, but obstacles have
to be overcome. (Elements of the robbery will be familiar to anyone who saw Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment).
Eddie Izzard is a total scene stealer, brightening up a dull patch in the middle, and the big man Robbie Coltrane takes a
break from Harry Potter duties.
Soderbergh also has at least two casting surprises up his long sleeves, and the detail of exactly who and when to look
for them won't be given away here. Be assured, however, that they add significantly to the light-hearted air of the movie
that is certain to be one of the new year's most popular attractions. The director keeps images flicking all over the crowded
screen, using hand-held digital cameras and graphics to try to make sense of the time frame in which the events are played
out.
Not all of the subplots work, but a major twist that brings Tess back for the third act and makes use of the actor's real
life pregnancy proves to be sheer bliss. Rest your eyes on the good-looking cast obviously enjoying their European reunion
and the See-Europe-Before-You-Die locations (Lake Como looks superb) and you won't even have to try to keep up with what's
happening to that bloody egg, and who exactly has it.
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