Thursday, September 22, 2005

This week…
MILLION DOLLAR BABY (2004)
Hilary Swank, Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman


I'm really gonna do it. I’m going to trash an Oscar winner.

Good grief, this film took home, like, 608 Oscars, and 1,104 Golden Globes, even a Finnish People’s Choice Award! The Finns, for crying out loud, who we know to be a melancholy people, appreciative of sad cinema, but did you know they are also a notoriously fussy and anti-Hollywood lot?

Should I pick on Clint Eastwood? What, do I feel lucky today?

Skank on Swank? How scabrous!

Then there’s Morgan Freeman. If I’m going to dump on a thespian, on a man of his grace and gravitas, then I suppose nothing is sacred.

Why don’t I just push little kids off tricycles? Better yet, why don’t I offer some tricycles to young hurricane victims, travel two thousand miles to hand-deliver them, and then just as the kids get pedaling a bit, feel the breeze in their hair, the sun on their little faces, and a glimmer of hope that today might be a good day, I’ll swat them off, sending them cart-wheeling into a ditch.

Even that wouldn’t be as heinous as saying a critical word about Mr. Freeman. I mean, the guy has actually played God on the big screen. It was in a terrible Jim Carrey movie, but he took that role and owned it.

How can I deviate from popular opinion? When you visit the Rotten Tomatoes website, notice that ninety-two percent of the critics who saw Million Dollar Baby endorsed it. These people can separate the good from the bad, and they have the pasty white faces and squinty, sun-starved eyes to prove it.

But I know when I’m being manipulated, at least by a film. As soon as Hilary Swank entered from stage left with a solemn, puppy dog face and an intimation of trailer trash birthright, my palms began to sweat. Then she spoke, with that quasi-Ozark/Cajun/Okie twang that movie stars use so ham-fistedly in the Big Movies, the kind of accent that a real hillbilly would dismiss as faux-inbred.

That’s when I knew we this was no longer a legitimate movie, but an expensive and flashy bid for at least one actor’s Oscar immortality.

Let’s size it up. You’ve got Eastwood, content to put the icing on a stellar career. It’s not urgent for him to collect more hardware, but it’s nice. You’ve got Swank, who already knows you’ve got to play a tragically-accented loser if you want to grasp the gold. And in this movie, she doesn’t even have to strap on a cock and balls. Another Oscar win puts her in Streep’s stratosphere, at least on the awards stat sheet. But even she knows she can’t hold Meryl’s coffee mug.

Then you’ve got Freeman, sturdy as an oak tree, reliable as a bran muffin. He acts, he narrates, and he usually serves as the Big Film’s moral conscience. Many consider him one of The Greatest Actors Of All Time.

And until this film, he was oh-for three in Oscar noms. Unbelievable, if not unforgivable.

So we’ve got to get Freeman an Oscar, and we’re going to have to load the deck in his favor. That’s how we ended up with a top-heavy cast and a flimsy script. If you dazzle the viewer with shiny legends and dazzling award winners, they won’t notice the been-there, done-that, mocked-it-lamely-on Saturday Night Live storyline.

A scrappy underdog meets a tough-as-nails old-timer… She’s got no daddy, and he’s estranged from his daughter. She’s got just… one… chance to rise out of a cesspool of poverty and despair, and he’s looking for redemption…

That smell isn’t coming from Eastwood and Freeman. True, there is a hint of Old Spice (and old guy) coming from them, but that moldy stench is coming from the script.

Then it’s all laid out for us, enhanced by the mellifluous timbre of the Freeman Narration™, which adds a lacquer of sophistication to this tired tale. Many dupes paid eight dollars and spent two hours blissfully unaware of the con. I spent one dollar and sixty one cents, including taxes, at the video store. Heh, me not so dumb.

Imagine it, if you had cast this movie with Tom Skeritt, Bill Cosby, and say, Kelly Ripa, it would have gone straight to video, and you may very well have taken it as your free pick with two new release rentals, but then hey, you noticed they had The Whole Ten Yards, and you sort of didn’t mind The Whole Nine Yards, so you tossed Million Dollar Baby back in the reminder bin. Am I right? I’m right.

But for two hours, blinded by star power, we trod the well-worn trail, excited to be on this journey. Swank went from hopeless hack to world-class boxer, Eastwood got her there, and they formed an unshakeable father-daughter bond. Sweet. Meanwhile, Freeman carried the mail, as it were, running the boxing gym and carrying the damn film, mainly with The Voice.

Freeman can say just about anything using The Voice, and you feel you’ve heard a sermon from the mount:

“Boy can’t even afford a pair of pants.” Damn straight!

“Get a job, punk.” Here’s the want ads!

“'Cause ma daytime socks got too many holes in ‘em.” Get the man a needle and thread!

“Sometimes, when it gets real hot, so hot you wanna climb inside the refrigerator for some respite, leaving the door open so as not to suffocate, and you wanna stay in there till the last day of summer, and then, when that day finally comes, you decide not to ever come out, cause you don’t ever wanna be hot again - when it gets that hot, my balls itch something fierce.”

He never said that. But if he did, people would have listened with reverence, and nodded attentively.

After a series of bulky, clanky hints that tell us Something Really, Really Bad is going to happen to our heroine, we see Swank take a dirty punch from an opponent, causing a swan dive where her head lands awkwardly on the stool she uses between rounds. The impact twists her neck and breaks her spine. We are supposed to regard this as an all at once tragic and treacherous act, when really it’s just about the most freakishly random accident one could have, since she would have been totally okay were it not for that stool that Eastwood had prematurely put into the ring. Way to go, Clint..

So Swank lies paralyzed in a care home, and Eastwood paces without a hint of guilt. In fact, he has the stones to actually blame it on Freeman, like the black man is to blame for every single thing. Well done, Clint.

But Freeman brushes it off and minds the boxing gym in Eastwood’s absence, offering up a little bit of mentorship, mixed with a dash of ass-kicking, made all the more profound by The Voice.

Meanwhile, back at the care home, Swank realizes what the rest of her life has in store for her – pureed peas, and drool pails. Not exactly The American Dream. So she asks Eastwood to re-enact the last scene from Ol’ Yeller. Well she doesn’t put it that way, because she knows that dog was a lot prettier than she is, even with the foaming mouth and glassy eyes. But clearly, she wants to be put down.

With his tail between his legs and a sh*t-eating smirk on his face, Eastwood seeks Freeman’s advice. Using The Voice, he pretty much spews nonsense, a whole lot of shizzle frizzle whazzle dazzle, but in a pitch that resonates profoundly with Eastwood and sets him on his course.

We conclude with a stealthy midnight trip to the care home. Eastwood gives Swank enough adrenaline to cause a cardiac explosion in an elephant. The coroner is going to love sorting through that bloody, chunky mess. Cause of death? Sh*t, I dunno, did she swallow a car bomb? Thanks a lot, Clint.

Eastwood never returns to his former life, and so we (nearly) end with Freeman presumably inheriting the gym, which probably owes three times its value in back taxes. Thanks again Clint, ya dink. But The Voice makes a life of perpetual debt and phlegmy spit buckets seem pretty darn good, if not downright honorable.

Then, somewhere in the Ozarks, we see Eastwood sitting in a shack eating pie, the lazy f*cker, and we fade to black. Who wants an Oscar? Line up to my left…

After the film, I hired a local boxer to work the speed bag while I held my face in its path. After twenty minutes I was bruised, bloody, and dazed enough to forget I ever saw Million Dollar Baby.

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