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January 25, 2005
Million Dollar Baby
Million Dollar Baby (2004), Clint Eastwood:
I was definitely in the exceedingly lukewarm crowd for Mystic River, so I wasn't really sure what to expect with the eerily similar near-universal acclaim for Clint's latest feature. (Well, the Village Voice apparently hated it, but I suppose that's the contrapositive of "universal acclaim").
Anyway, I absolutely loved it. Hilary Swank anchors the terrific cast, bringing a vitality to the dangerously subtle performances of Mr. Eastwood and Morgan Freeman. That's not to say they do poorly, but they essentially are variations on stock characters; there's a limit to how far any actor can push them. The story is a nice play on the boxing-rise-to-glory theme; Eastwood does good.
I still don't get the hubbub over Mystic River. Clint Eastwood here shows a sense of emotional restraint--remarkable for the combination of sports and old men exorcising demons--which was so clearly lacking in Mystic River. I'm not sure how much of it was the combination of Sean Penn and Tim Robbins, but it's just so self-indulgent.
Eastwood still has limitations as a director. He'll never be as technically sound behind the camera as, say, Ron Howard. With his emotional maturity, though, he doesn't need to be. Like his skills as composer, which no one would say are particularly masterful (and which A.O. Scott describes as "Unobtrusive"), they're more than adequate to translate his vision to the screen.
14/15
Posted by bing at January 25, 2005 04:49 PM