Million Dollar Baby a knockout

Million Dollar Baby merits all the praise and attention it can get, but it’s more than a movie (not saying that most great movies aren’t.) It is a cinematic gift from Clint Eastwood to all who watch it.

The movie provokes more passion and emotion than any film that I have seen in a long while; well, at least since Mystic River. It is a triumph for Eastwood’s directing and acting career. His talents have evolved into an almost pro-human level of understanding, and appear to be continually improving.

The film is beautiful, comical, and sorrowful. The comedy in it is not derived from lame, ignorant acts or site-gags, but rather from the potency of its dialogue. Watching two legends like Freeman and Eastwood sharing one screen is massively entertaining in itself, although coupled with piquant wit and sharp timing, it’s a wholly absorbing pleasure.

I worship films that can feed off their actors the way this one does. It’s fulfilling to leave the theater knowing that all talent was extricated.

However, I fear many will be disappointed in how the film progresses. I sat inside a theater of about a thousand people who seemed aggravated by the film’s finale. Some were grunting, “Well, that was unexpected.” If expectations were met by all films, it wouldn’t be an art. It would be television.

I don’t want to explain too much of the plot because that is most of the fun, watching this film develop. No synopsis of the movie could do it any justice. I assume that is why Eastwood limits his theatrical trailers to a mere overview of the characters and some poignant lines within the film. A voice-over summary giving away the intent of the film would destroy some of its charismatic appeal.

Million Dollar Baby does not deserve a number to be assigned to it, but I gave it a “4.0,” a perfect score from me, but it truly deserves its own category that reaches beyond a linear assessment.

It is certainly this year’s best film and one of the best films of the last decade, if not the best.