Million Dollar Baby
| Million Dollar Baby | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Clint Eastwood |
| Written by | Paul Haggis F.X. Toole |
| Produced by | Clint Eastwood Albert S. Ruddy Tom Rosenberg |
| Starring | Clint Eastwood Hilary Swank Morgan Freeman |
| Distributed by | Warner Brothers |
Running time | 137 min. |
| Budget | $30,000,000 |
Million Dollar Baby is a 2004 dramatic film directed by Clint Eastwood. The screenplay was written by Paul Haggis based on short stories by F.X. Toole, the pen name for fight manager and "cut man" Jerry Boyd, originally published under the title Rope Burns, which have since been republished under the movie's title. It stars Eastwood, Hilary Swank, and Morgan Freeman. It is the story of an aging boxing trainer and his efforts to help a young woman achieve her dream: becoming a professional boxer.
Plot
Template:Spoiler Maggie (Hilary Swank) yearns to be a boxing champ, and calls on the help of trainer Frank Dunn (Clint Eastwood) to aid her aspirations. He at first spurns her advances but with the insistence of his friend Eddie Dupris (Morgan Freeman) and persistence of Maggie, he gives in.
Awards
Million Dollar Baby was honored as the Best Picture of 2004 at the 77th Academy Awards. Eastwood was awarded his second Directing Oscar for the film and also received a Best Actor nomination. Swank and Freeman received Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor Oscars. The film was also nominated for the Film Editing and Writing Adapted Screenplay awards.
Criticism
Template:Spoiler In January and February 2005, the film became controversial when some disability rights activists protested the ending of the film.[1][2] Around the same time it was criticized by activists from the Christian Right and social conservatives, including Rush Limbaugh and Michael Medved, on the same issue. Medved stated that: "My main objection to Million Dollar Baby always centered on its misleading marketing, and effort by Warner Brothers to sell it as a movie about a female Rocky, with barely a hint of the pitch-dark substance that led Andrew Sarris of the New York Observer (hardly a right-winger) to declare that 'no movie in my memory has depressed me more than Million Dollar Baby.'"[3]
Eastwood responded to the criticism by pointing out the the movie was about the American dream.[4] In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Eastwood distanced himself from the actions of characters in his films, noting, "I've gone around in movies blowing people away with a .44 magnum. But that doesn't mean I think that's a proper thing to do"[5]. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times, who named the film his favorite of 2004, believes "a movie is not good or bad because of its content, but because of how it handles its content. Million Dollar Baby is classical in the clean, clear, strong lines of its story and characters, and had an enormous emotional impact."[6] The Weekly Standard also criticized the movie for its ending and for missed opportunities. [7]
On a more topical level, Million Dollar Baby has been criticized by some sportswriters as being greatly inaccurate and confusing from a boxing perspective.[8] Some Irish speakers have also argued that the phrase Mo Cuishle should actually be spelled Mo Chuisle, but the movie has also been praised for awakening interest in the Irish language.[9]
The movie has also been criticized for negative stereotypes of poor white southerners, and as anti-welfare propaganda.
Trivia
Eastwood's son Kyle co-wrote some of the songs for the movie (the soundtrack is due to be released March 1, 2005), as he did for Clint's previous year's Mystic River. Clint's daughter Morgan makes an appearance in the movie as "Little Girl in Truck".
In a successful attempt to qualify the film for the 77th Academy Awards, in which it won 4 awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, the movie was filmed in just 37 days.