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"How much she weigh?" Maggie asks Frankie about the daughter he hasn't seen in years. Toole." The dialogue is poetic but never fancy. Haggis adapted the story from Rope Burns: Stories From the Corner, a 2000 book by Jerry Boyd, a 70-year-old fight manager who wrote it as "F.X. Other nominations, possibly Oscars, will go to Swank, Eastwood, Freeman, the picture and many technicians - and possibly the original score composed by Eastwood, which always does what is required and never distracts.
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The screenplay is by Paul Haggis, who has worked mostly on TV but with this earns an Oscar nomination. She wins from the beginning, but that's not the point "Million Dollar Baby" is about a woman determined to make something of herself, and a man who doesn't want to do anything for this woman, and will finally do everything. It is a "boxing movie" in the sense that it follows Maggie's career and has several fight scenes. It is a dark picture overall: a lot of shadows, many night scenes, characters who seem to recede into private fates. Watch how the rhythm of this lighting matches the tone and pacing of the words, as if the visuals are caressing the conversation. Instead of using the usual "dashboard lights" that mysteriously seem to illuminate the whole front seat, watch how he has their faces slide in and out of shadow, how sometimes we can't see them at all, only hear them.
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Look at the way the cinematographer, Tom Stern, uses the light in this scene. She tells Frankie a story involving her father, whom she loved, and an old dog she loved, too. This is true, but do not make the mistake of thinking there is romance between them. "I got nobody but you, Frankie," Maggie says. Maggie's mother is played by Margo Martindale as an ignorant and selfish monster. There's another scene, at night driving in a car, after Frankie and Maggie have visited Maggie's family. No "reactions," no little nods, no body language except perfect stillness, deep attention and an unwavering gaze. It is an important scene for Freeman, but I want you to observe how Swank has Maggie do absolutely nothing but listen. Consider the scene where she and Scrap sit at a lunch counter, and Scrap tells how he lost the sight in one eye, how Frankie blames himself for not throwing in the towel. She reduces Maggie to a fierce intensity.
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But Scrap is not merely an observer the film gives him a life of his own when the others are offscreen. He talks about how the girl walked into the gym, how she wouldn't leave, how Frankie finally agreed to train her, and what happened then. The voice is flat and factual: You never hear Scrap going for an affect or putting a spin on his words. Morgan Freeman is the narrator, just as he was in " The Shawshank Redemption," which this film resembles in the way the Freeman character describes a man who became his lifelong study.
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Yes, " Mystic River" is a great film, but this one finds the simplicity and directness of classical storytelling it is the kind of movie where you sit very quietly in the theater and are drawn deeply into lives that you care very much about.
![movies like million dollar baby movies like million dollar baby](https://www.movieflavor.com/images/87/8701ab757be19662cd7729008e9eec7b.jpeg)
"Million Dollar Baby" is Eastwood's 25th film as a director, and his best.
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Others gain it, learning how to tell a story that contains everything it needs and absolutely nothing else. Some directors lose focus as they grow older. 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. These three characters are seen with a clarity and truth that is rare in the movies. When Frankie refuses to train a "girly," it's Scrap who convinces him to give Maggie a chance: "She grew up knowing one thing. Now he lives in a room at the gym and is Frankie's partner in conversations that have coiled down through the decades. Otherwise, she says, "I might as well go back home and buy a used trailer and get a deep fryer and some Oreos." Morgan Freeman is Scrap, who was managed by Frankie into a title bout. 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. Eastwood plays the trainer, Frankie, who runs a seedy gym in Los Angeles and reads poetry on the side.