Eastwood treats the conventions of the boxing-movie genre, its measured alternations of adversity and redemption, like the chord changes to a familiar song - the kind of standard that can, in the hands of a deft and sensitive musician, be made to yield fresh meanings and unexpected reservoirs of deep and difficult emotion. With its careful, unassuming naturalism, its visual thrift and its emotional directness, "Million Dollar Baby" feels at once contemporary and classical, a work of utter mastery that at the same time has nothing in particular to prove. Eastwood, who is of Depression-era vintage himself (he will turn 75 next year), is interested in nostalgia, or in the self-conscious quotation of a bygone cinematic tradition, or even in simplicity for its own sake. This is a Warner Brothers release, and if it were not in color (and if the young fighter in question were not female), "Million Dollar Baby," with its open-hearted mixture of sentiment and grit, might almost be mistaken for a picture from the studio's 1934 lineup that was somehow mislaid for 70 years. On the contrary: it is a quiet, intimately scaled three-person drama directed in a patient, easygoing style, without any of the displays of allusive cleverness or formal gimmickry that so often masquerade as important filmmaking these days.Īt first glance the story, about a grizzled boxing trainer whose hard heart is melted by a spunky young fighter, seems about as fresh as a well-worn gym shoe.
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Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby" is the best movie released by a major Hollywood studio this year, and not because it is the grandest, the most ambitious or even the most original.