Million Dollar Baby(2004)

***Female “Rocky” with a downbeat and contradictory close*** Released in 2004 and directed by Clint Eastwood, “Million Dollar Baby” stars Eastwood as a cantankerous boxing trainer who owns a working class gym in Los Angeles, which is maintained by one of his former boxers, the narrator of the story (Morgan Freeman). A waitress from the sticks of Missouri (Hilary Swank) shows up and asks that Frankie (Eastwood)…

Reviewed on December 19, 2018

Unreal! I didn't expect <em>'Million Dollar Baby'</em> to be so astonishingly brilliant. I've said it many a time before but for full context, I do not read up about films before watching them - aside from making sure the film isn't part of a franchise, checking the run time and seeing the genre - so I was expecting this to be a cliché-filled, but still great, sports flick. It's so much more than that. It's way…

Reviewed on February 9, 2022

**Million Dollar Baby is an extremely well-done film that takes an abrupt turn to deal with incredibly sobering subjects that are definitely not what I thought I signed up for.** I know it’s supposedly a masterpiece, and I will lose some cred for saying this, but Million Dollar Baby was a dreadful movie. I spent the first half of the film falling in love with the hopeful, talented, and inspiring Maggie Fitzgerald…

Reviewed on November 23, 2022

The curmudgeonly “Frankie” (Clint Eastwood) runs a boxing gym with his stalwart “Eddie” (Morgan Freeman) that’s full of testosterone-charged no-hopers like “Berry” (Anthony Mackie) all going through the motions. The only exception is the young “Barch” (Jay Baruchel) who fancies himself as the best welterweight in the world, but who clearly couldn’t pull a pint let alone a punch. One afternoon, they notice a girl.…

Reviewed on January 25, 2026