When was million dollar baby made

But, like everything else in the film, it comes with a steep price. Like Will Munney in Unforgiven , Frankie does what he does in the full knowledge that it will cost him his soul, and that afterwards he will never be able to rejoin moral society. As I've written elsewhere , it's ironic that Unforgiven has been read as anti-vigilantism and Million Dollar Baby as pro-euthanasia, even though the two follow a nearly identical arc. Million Dollar Baby may not have been the best film of last year.

For my money that would have been this or this. But for all its faults, it is a mature and serious film by a director belatedly coming into his full powers, a reminder that even in Hollywood there is an alternative to empty irony and sentimental hackery. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic.

Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. Sign In Subscribe. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly The final film of Sergio Leone's "Dollars" trilogy features a picaresque adventure in the foreground and a biting indictment of war in general--and the American Civil War in particular--as backdrop.

Much of the latter was cut out of the English language release, but restored somewhat unevenly in a special edition DVD released last year.

Magnum Force Eastwood's transformation from conservative hero to conservative bugaboo is usually traced to his revisionist western Unforgiven. But arguably he never subverted his iconic vigilante persona more aggressively than in this first Dirty Harry sequel, in which his Inspector Callahan takes on rogue cops in his own department. Unforgiven Not as good as its reputation, but Eastwood's most ambitious directorial effort up to that point though, remarkably, it was already his sixteenth stint behind the lens, with nine more since.

A Perfect World Kevin Costner does the best work of his career as an escaped convict driving across Texas with an only partly unwilling young hostage. But the parallel storyline featuring Eastwood and Laura Dern as two of the law enforcement agents chasing them is strained and tedious. Photos Top cast Edit. Marcus Chait J. Fitzgerald as J. Tom McCleister Lawyer as Lawyer. Erica Grant Nurse as Nurse. Clint Eastwood. More like this. Watch options.

Storyline Edit. At the outset, he flatly refuses saying he has no interest in training a girl. Frankie leads a lonely existence, alienated from his only daughter and having few friends.

Maggie's rough around the edges, but shows a lot of grit in the ring and he eventually relents. Maggie not only proves to be the boxer he always dreamed of having under his wing, but a friend who fills the great void he's had in his life. Maggie's career skyrockets, but an accident in the ring leads her to ask Frankie for one last favor. Beyond his silence, there is a past. Beyond her dreams, there is a feeling. Beyond hope, there is a memory. Beyond their journey, there is a love.

Rated PG for violence, some disturbing images, thematic material and language. Did you know Edit. Goofs The back of Maggie's robe has the phrase "Mo Cuishle". However the correct spelling in Irish Gaeilge is "Mo Chuisle". Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby" is a masterpiece, pure and simple, deep and true. It tells the story of an aging fight trainer and a hillbilly girl who thinks she can be a boxer. It is narrated by a former boxer who is the trainer's best friend. But it's not a boxing movie.

It is a movie about a boxer. What else it is, all it is, how deep it goes, what emotional power it contains, I cannot suggest in this review, because I will not spoil the experience of following this story into the deepest secrets of life and death.

This is the best film of the year. Eastwood plays the trainer, Frankie, who runs a seedy gym in Los Angeles and reads poetry on the side. Hilary Swank plays Maggie, from southwest Missouri, who has been waitressing since she was 13 and sees boxing as the one way she can escape waitressing for the rest of her life. Otherwise, she says, "I might as well go back home and buy a used trailer and get a deep fryer and some Oreos.

Now he lives in a room at the gym and is Frankie's partner in conversations that have coiled down through the decades. When Frankie refuses to train a "girly," it's Scrap who convinces him to give Maggie a chance: "She grew up knowing one thing. She was trash. These three characters are seen with a clarity and truth that is rare in the movies. Eastwood, who doesn't carry a spare ounce on his lean body, doesn't have any padding in his movie, either: Even as the film approaches the deep emotion of its final scenes, he doesn't go for easy sentiment, but regards these people, level-eyed, as they do what they have to do.

Some directors lose focus as they grow older. Others gain it, learning how to tell a story that contains everything it needs and absolutely nothing else.

There are two warnings about this column. First warning: Extreme P. If your politically correct sensibilities are easily offended, then read no further.

Second warning: The ending of the movie "Million Dollar Baby" is revealed. It has received seven Academy Award nominations including best picture.

And well it should. It is a fine movie that offers a touching view of an evolving relationship between an aging fight manager and trainer, Frankie Dunn, played to the hilt as a craggy, old-school grouch by Eastwood, and Maggie Fitzgerald, a late-to-the-game, white-trash girl who has seized upon boxing as her ticket to self-satisfaction.

She is played with great poignancy by Swank. A controversial twist What has made the movie controversial is the twist it takes at the end. Maggie goes after the championship title against a tough, veteran boxer who is willing to do anything to win. The older pro cheap-shots Maggie after the bell rings and she falls, breaking her neck.

Paralyzed, bed-bound and permanently on a ventilator that pushes air through a tube in her throat, Maggie decides that her life is no longer worth living. She asks Frankie, who has become her closest friend and a surrogate father, if he will kill her.

Frankie resists. His conscience and his Catholicism make mercy killing ethically off-limits.