Million Dollar Baby

850 Words2 Pages

Million Dollar Baby

Million Dollar Baby, Clint Eastwood’s latest movie as a director has been getting more and more positive reviews recently and it is even better than Mystic River. At first glance, the film looks like another boxing-movie cliché. However, Eastwood has succeeded in creating a compelling and moving story about the intricate world of human relationships, the price of success and the realization of dreams. The movie explores many different subject matters. Million Dollar Baby is about friendship and respect. It is about love and it is about dreams.

The main theme of the movie is the boxing career of Maggie Fitzgerald (played by Hilary Swank) - a 30-year old waitress who lives alone and barely gets by. However, she is strongly determined to become a professional boxer and this is why she seeks the help of Frankie Dunn (played by Clint Eastwood), a boxing trainer and an owner of a gym. Initially, Frankie is unwilling to train her because she is female and too old to have any chance of achieving significant accomplishments in professional boxing. However, Frankie’s friend and associate Eddie Dupris (played by Morgan Freeman), really believes in Maggie and lets her train in a corner of the gym. As time passes, Maggie’s persistence and Eddie’s pushiness finally change Frankie’s mind. This is when the true story begins. Maggie’s determination and strong will to fulfill her dream, combined with Frankie’s excellent training skills launch both of them into the professional boxing orbit where they gloriously win battle after battle.

Although the story seems like a big cliché, in truth, the world of Million Dollar Baby involves much more than boxing and success. Clint Eastwood treats such subject matters as love, f...

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...she is happy. In general, all the actors in the movie make the audience feel what they are feeling and this is essential for the movie as the plot is deeply emotionally charged.

As reviewer Sean O’Connell notes in his column at Filmcritic.com, Million Dollar Baby was expected to be “a half-baked, rushed-into-awards-season castoff by a respected filmmaker still basking in the glow of his last well-received piece”. Fortuitously, the movie has turned out to be one of the best motion pictures of the year. Once again Clint Eastwood surprises us all with his work as a film director. He gives the audience a chance to consider life from another viewpoint. The movie makes one think about what he or she has achieved in life and Maggie shows us that it is never too late to have a dream fulfilled. After all, this is why we are actually born and live: to fulfill our dreams.

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