Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman
My rating:

It’s sad being poor, and poor people make me sad all the time, maybe because I know what it feels like to collect pennies for a burger. But poor people find the most amazing things to be happy about. Little things. The lack of everything in being poor is a good drive to search for a better meaning in one’s life.

This movie almost made me cry a dozen times. It’s like a cross between 8Mile and Rocky. When you have no one and nothing to count on, you rely on yourself and your own passion, it’s all you got.

Hilary Swank plays Maggie, a 31 year old wannabe boxer equipped only with her raw talent, unshakable focus and a tremendous force of will. She has nothing else, no one. One day she pops up in Frankie’s gym hoping that Frankie (Clint Eastwood) would take a shot at training her. Frankie is in the middle of a painful estrangement from his daughter, and he wasn’t about to let himself get close to anyone ever again. Maggie only wanted a shot, and someone to believe in her for once. Through her sheer determination Frankie finally took her in under his training.

The story portrays poor life and hardship. It has good moral values spread all over the place. It encourages us to think about our life and reflect on what we’ve done with it. When you die can you say to yourself “I think I did all right?” Maggie sure can, she had her shot and she’s happy despite what happens to her in the end.

This is a good movie with a sad ending. You’ll end up thinking or crying, either way it’ll make you feel that you can die and go to heaven if you can eat a good piece of lemon pie.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 25th, 2005 at 10:33pm and is filed under movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.