Million Dollar Baby

Disclaimer one: This isn't just the "female Rocky" that studios and money-hungry fat-cats misleadingly sold it as. Disclaimer two: It's still bloody good. Disclaimer three: Stop reading this review if you haven't yet seen the movie. Disclaimer four (still reading? It's your own fault now): it may start out as a Rocky-ish underdog-boxer-climbs-ranks-for-self-worth tale, but the final third changes pace so jarringly that it delivers an instant KO.

Despite being an untrained 31-year-old, Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) wants to box professionally. After gym owner and boxing trainer Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) loses his potential heavyweight contender, Maggie asks him to train her. Despite the overly-cautious Frankie's blunt refusals, she eventually wears him down with the help of his longtime friend and co-worker Eddie Dupris (Morgan Freeman).

Adapted from the short story by 69-year-old fight insider FX Toole (great name) the narrative could easily have lent itself to an all-too generic sports cliché. Thankfully, the one-two punch of Eastwood's unhurried direction and Freeman's usual gravitas (his voice really was created for voiceovers) results in a simple and earthy tale with a Shawshank-ish vibe of redemption.

Also, it doesn't hurt to have a screenwriter like Paul Haggis in your corner (you know the fella, he wrote Due South), the TV scribe presumably adding some nice touches to an already beautiful character piece. There isn't a bad performance from the lot (even Jay Baruchel's sometimes OTT comic relief plays well and leads to Eddie’s joyous ‘comeback’), it's Swank who delivers the knock-out blow as she mans-up again to stand shoulder to shoulder with heavyweights Eastwood and Freeman.

Indeed, while there are inevitable glimpses of the familiar odd-couple duo and trainer-trainee partnership, the dynamic between Maggie and Frankie feels fresh at the heart of the movie. Consequently, the game-changing sucker-punch that arrives later lands a truly hefty emotional haymaker that no viewer will be able to recover from. Just try not contemplating what you’d do in that position afterwards.

Beautiful, powerful, surprising, affecting, beautifully-scored, moving… in short, another cracker from Clint.