Million Dollar Baby is a drama film released in 2004 and directed by Clint Eastwood. A 30-year-old, working-class woman tries to become a boxer, despite the many obstacles.
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Maggie Fitzgerald (played by Hilary Swank) is a hard-working waitress who dreams of becoming a boxer (an athlete, not a dog breed). She insists on being trained by Frankie Dunn (played by Clint Eastwood), who says he doesn’t train girls.
However, after some interceding by Scrap (played by Morgan Freeman), he accepts. That proves that Maggie and Frankie make a perfect duo.
For the first time, I’ll try to record it freestyle, drinking some coffee and chilling, without a pre-written text. Let’s see how it goes.
I have to warn everybody that it will be struggles. I don’t do live presentations since my college days and i finished it in 2015, I guess.
Million Dollar Baby is more or less the typical underdog story maggie fitzgerald is a 30-something-year-old woman a waitress who never had boxing lessons before however with a little bit of training with the right trainer she becomes a successful boxer.
It’s far-fetched, but the story has compelling enough elements to keep us watching, to keep us enjoying. It’s nice to see her grow, it’s nice to see her defeating the opponents and especially nice to see her relationship with a trainer played by Clint Eastwood.
Frankie and Maggie’s relationship is something of a father-daughter relationship. He is estranged from his biological daughter, and Maggie lost her father long time ago, so the two of them replaced these missing roles from their lives with one another.
This relationship is probably the thing i like the most about the film especially when it gets around the last stat when things got darker.
By the way, the whole movie is kind of dark and melancholic. It has a melancholic tone to it. However, it has a lot of hope as well, and has funny moments, especially between Frankie and Scrap, a lot of casual banter until the last act, where things get very intense, very emotional.
in this tense last act is where happened the most uncomfortable scene with the most disgusting characters Maggie’s family her sister and her mother. I won’t be specific about which scene it is because it will be spoilers but everyone who watched the film will know what I’m talking about.
But that being said, I don’t like how Clint Eastwood portrays the poor people in this film, specifically in this film, I can’t talk about the others.
On one side, we have Maggie. An extremely hard-working woman who achieves success after many struggles, showing, in some way, that the poor people who work hard enough can get to the top, which is a LIE! And on the other side, we have her family of lazy, fat people, who live off of welfare which is another strawman.
No one wants to live in poverty, and the people who live in poverty, don’t live in poverty because they don’t work hard enough. Mostly, the poor people are the ones who work harder than anybody else. You’ll never see Jeff Bezos working as hard as any of his employees.
The only other unpleasant character is Shawrelle (played by Anthony Mackie) he’s always bullying that boy Danger (played by Jay Baruchel).
There’s the villain, but that girl is not even a villain villain, she’s just a tool to make the story get to the final point.
All the others are really enjoyable, especially the main trio: Maggie, Frankie and Scrap. The last being the only one i didn’t talk about yet.
He’s a different character. He’s like the glue of the thing and as a narrator he’s the one who introduces to the dynamics of this little universe that composes the film and besides his function he is also just a nice character a very compelling very enjoyable person.
Morgan Freeman does his job marvelously, as usual. As everybody else, actually. Clint Eastwood is great, but my favorite has to be Hilary Swank, she transmitted the humbleness of the character. She’s sweet, but at the same time, fierce, and she could portray all this range of emotions flawlessly.
In the last act when things got very dark she performs amazingly she’s a complete actress i think she really deserves the Oscar.
The score and cinematography are really good, but not all that’s special. It goes well with the melancholic tone I was talking about earlier, but is very far from remarkable.
Million Dollar Baby is a movie that exceeds in very many aspects. The acting is amazing, the story keeps us engaged throughout the whole duration and have very few flaws. However, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is still slightly above in my opinion and gets the title of favorite of this year’s Oscars. Anyway, Million Dollar Baby gets 9 Moons.
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Dos Ratos 