One Meeeelion Dollars

BEWARE--SPOILERS BEFOUL THE WATERS AHEAD

The Oscar folks got it right. Million Dollar Baby is a great movie. I had been itching to see the film last winter after reading remarkably superlative reviews from both Roger Ebert and The New York Times, this for a movie that I had been decidedly non-plussed by the advance notice and commercials for. I finally saw it on trusty 'ol DVD last week, and was just completely floored.

The biggest surprise (not the third act twist, which, despite my best efforts not to, I had been made aware of) for me was Morgan Freeman's performance. I suppose I had in the back of head been thinking of his Oscar win for the film as a de facto career achievement award. You know, one of those "you are a great actor whose never won an Oscar so take one for this good, but not really Oscar-worthy, performance." Was I wrong. I knew from reviews that Freeman's character narrates the film, and many reviewers kind of snidely alluded that he was just rehashing his excellent work on The Shawshank Redemption. No. That mellifulous voice is there, of course, but it's wrapped within a whispery growl; you could almost imagine that Redd Foxx had lived and come out of retirement to do this part. There was a rough and tumble accent and a flatness that's completely apposite to trhe "Freeman voice"; he was not, as some quarters indicated, doing a gloss on the typical angelic "Freeman character" but creating a very, specific, very real person. I find it harder and harder to argue for anyone else as "our greatest living actor."

Of course, the rest of the film was equal to Freeman's performance. Both Clint Eastwood and Hilary Swank were excellent, creating very specific characters. Eastwood did lean a little, certainly more than Freeman, on the "Eastwood" personae, but was able to inflect enough twists and turns to make Frankie real to us. And this was my first Swank performance, so I was unaware of how well she is able to inhabit a character. I never heard a "Hollywood actress doing an accent," but a real, lower-class, uneducated woman from Missouri.

Now, about that twist. Again, I knew it was coming, so it's power was, of course, diluted. But it still had a strong, strong impact. What made it work was how accurately it reflected how these things work in real life. The kind of life-altering injury that Maggie suffers is never expected and is always random; I've read some criticism that the moment comes out of nowhere, wrenching the story off track. Exactly. Christopher Reeve's story wasn't building towards that accident; it was a surprise that completely altered his story. Same here. And the character's reaction to that event was what made the whole thing work just so well. Criticism of the decision Frankie and Maggie make is completely off-base. The point of the story isn't that a lifetime of near-complete paralysis is not worth living, but that for this particular woman it wasn't. It was the decision that was right for her, that she had to made, and the film made you believe it. And it made you understand the impact on Frankie in a very clear way.

Enough said. Count this as a full-fledged recommendation for the film; I certainly didn't see a better one last year.

Until Whenever