Million Dollar Baby
August 2005 Reviewed by: Josh Barber Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Every so often, a film seems to collect critical praise like a snowball rolling downhill. You can't turn around without reading, hearing, or seeing a positive review. Finally, the film storms through Oscar season, picking up whatever trophies it may, and becomes cemented as "a great movie," at which point no one questions it any longer. Million Dollar Baby is that kind of film.

Unfortunately, it is also the kind of film that takes a big, roundhouse swing at importance, but only manages a glancing blow. It seems like it should be important, so people assume it is. It's a good film, yes, but it's not great.

Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) is an aging boxing manager and gym owner who's just seen his shot at the big time walk out the door when he meets Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), a 30-something with dreams of becoming a fighter. He refuses to train her, but she refuses to leave. With some prodding from his janitor, Scrap (Morgan Freeman), the old man begins to soften.

Million Dollar Baby earned a few Academy Awards for its actors. If this was the best acting last year, then things must have been pretty grim. Not that anyone did a bad job -- not by any means. It's just that we've seen better from all three principals. Morgan Freeman has little to do other than narrate. As Scrap, he gets one good scene that, while rewarding to watch, fails to connect with the rest of the narrative. Hilary Swank plays the same type of desexualized character she's played since the beginning of her career, just with bigger biceps and a thicker drawl. Eastwood gives the best performance of the three, but he has done better.

Eastwood wasn't just acting in front of the camera; he was working behind it as well, serving as the film's producer and director. His direction here really is top notch, even if the story -- if you'll forgive the phrase -- lacks punch. Million Dollar Baby aims for the heart, but telegraphs its punches. It's an underdog story, the tale of a scrappy kid with nothing to lose. We even get a training montage straight out of an '80s movie, albeit with better music. If a subject is brought up in the film, it'll come back again later, and every exchange is positively dripping with portentous meaning.

Million Dollar Baby skirts some deeper moral and sociological issues, but ultimately avoids them. I give it credit for leaving some questions unresolved, but it spends a lot more time holding the audience's hand and leading viewers through its situations. It also relies on the emotional-damage crutch a bit too heavily. It seems that shorthand to developing a female character these days is to give her "daddy issues."

There are two DVD editions of Million Dollar Baby: two-disc and three-disc versions. The extras are all the same, but the three-disc edition comes with a copy of the film's soundtrack -- composed by Eastwood, orchestrated and conducted by Lenny Niehaus.

The color palette of the film is quite subdued, but the transfer handles it beautifully. The dark scenes are inky black, but when we do see flashes of color, they really pop off the screen. Every craggy detail of Eastwood's and Freeman's faces is captured well, and there are no distracting errors or artifacts to be seen. This film simply looks superb.

There's a lot of dialogue in Million Dollar Baby, and of course it comes from the center channel, but when we get to the fight scenes, your home-theater system will really come to life, dropping you into the arena as Maggie takes on another challenger.

The few extras we get are by themselves on the second disc. First is James Lipton Takes on Three, a 25-minute roundtable with the three stars and moderator James Lipton. For those who only know Lipton from his swirling, sycophantic Inside the Actors Studio, this interview shows that there's some real knowledge behind the man. He asks good questions and gets good answers.

Born to Fight is a 19-minute featurette that serves as a "making-of." There are interviews with Eastwood, Freeman and Swank, as well as real-life boxer Lucia Rijker, who was Swank's boxing coach and appears in the film as the Ivan Drago-styled Billie "The Blue Bear." The piece goes fairly in-depth for such a short running time, and is much better than the slapdash extras we usually see on DVD releases of Oscar-winning movies.

Finally we get Producers Round 15, a short piece featuring Albert Ruddy talking about the film's origins. He and producer/writer Paul Haggis are interviewed. Eastwood based his voice in the film on Ruddy's, so if you liked that in his performance, this is a chance to check out where it came from.

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