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Million Dollar Baby

Universal acclaim
Based on 39 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 380 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by:
Paul Haggis
F.X. Toole (stories)
Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 15, 2004
DVD: July 12, 2005
Running Time: 132 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for violence, some disturbing images, thematic material and language
Starring Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman, Jay Baruchel, Mike Colter, Lucia Rijker, Brian F. O'Byrne, Anthony Mackie, and Margo Martindale
Two retired boxers who run a Los Angeles gym are caught off guard when a woman approaches them with her dream of stepping into the ring.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Absolute Power Bird Blood Work Changeling Flags of Our Fathers Letters from Iwo Jima Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Mystic River Space Cowboys The Bridges of Madison County True Crime Unforgiven
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
Under Eastwood's painstakingly stripped-down direction -- his filmmaking has become the cinematic equivalent of Hemingway's spare though precise prose -- the story emerges as that rarest of birds, an uplifting tragedy.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Staying at the top of his game when most of his contemporaries have long since hung up their gloves, Clint Eastwood delivers another knockout punch with Million Dollar Baby.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
Eastwood takes the audience to raw, profoundly moving places. If you fear strong emotions, this is not for you. But if you want to see Hollywood filmmaking at its most potent, Eastwood has delivered the real deal.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
Achieves a mellowness and melancholy that recalls the jazzy dissonance of director (and here, composer) Eastwood's best work: "The Outlaw Josey Wales," "Bird," "Unforgiven" and "Mystic River."
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Perhaps the director's most touching, most elegiac work yet, Million Dollar Baby is a film that does both the expected and the unexpected, that has the nerve and the will to be as pitiless as it is sentimental.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
With its careful, unassuming naturalism, its visual thrift and its emotional directness, Million Dollar Baby feels at once contemporary and classical, a work of utter mastery that at the same time has nothing in particular to prove.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
Has a beautifully modulated sadness that's almost musical. Eastwood once made a movie about Charlie Parker ("Bird"), but this picture has the smoothly melancholic tones of Coleman Hawkins at his greatest.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
A spare, exquisitely realized masterpiece about faith, redemption and boxing that beautifully illustrates his longtime philosophy that "less is more."
Read Full Review >USA Today Mike Clark
As good as "Unforgiven." Or, to put it another way, as good as any movie Eastwood has ever directed.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
A remarkably appealing success story full of heart and humor and poignancy, with Swank as winning as shes ever been.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
A masterpiece, pure and simple, deep and true...The best film of the year.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
It's an ideal match, and Eastwood deserves accolades as both director and star of this powerfully made picture.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Haggis's dialogue is worthy of Hemingway, and the three leads border on perfection.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Ages well in memory because it gradually seems to mean more. Its meaning can't be summed up in a sentence, but it has to do with a view of life as inexpressibly sad and yet always right.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
It's an emotionally gripping, daringly genre-twisting, consummately crafted piece of filmmaking.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
More than "Unforgiven," more than "Mystic River," it is Clint Eastwood's autumnal masterpiece.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
One of the many pleasures of this beautifully composed, measured movie is how it reminds you of the power of pure storytelling -- an art that's too often overlooked in contemporary films in the rush for sensation and excitement.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
This heartbreaking film, with its rich performances and simple eloquence, lays claim to greatness.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Steve Davis
Unlike other filmmakers in the autumn or winter of their careers, Eastwood doesn't seem content to rest on his laurels and give his audiences the tried and the true. For that reason, among many others, he and Million Dollar Baby are true champions.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Reveals the drama and degredation so powerfully that it ranks among the all-time heavyweights of sports movies.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Rick Kisonak
Eastwood tells the story at a pace well under the Hollywood speed limit, tosses in details so beguiling they seem about to sprout into motion pictures of their own and bathes his subjects in shadows as lovely as those in any Rembrandt.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
A movie of tough excitement and surprise, even grace.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
So wonderfully antiquated, so blissfully free of postmodern cleverness.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
The heart of Million Dollar Baby lies in the core relationships among Frankie, Maggie and Scrap, friendships so pure, so genuine, so authentic that it takes actors of Eastwood's, Swank's and Freeman's caliber to sell them in this otherwise cynical world.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Bill Gallo
Baby may not be quite as compelling as Mystic River or Unforgiven, but there's something so stirring, and disquieting, too, in his quest that we cannot help but pay close attention to him. In the middle of his long career's third act, he's still searching for the secrets in things with striking resolve. You certainly can't ask more than that of any 75-year-old ex-gunslinger.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
Million Dollar Baby is a knockout. It is Clint Eastwood's baby in every respect a movie that approaches the level of great boxing films, like "Raging Bull," by using sport as a metaphor for human nature.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
It is a rich and challenging motion picture that both affirms life and emphasizes its fragility. Eastwood touches our hearts and energizes our minds without resorting to overt manipulation.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
The knockout punch comes from Eastwood. His stripped-down performance -- as powerful as anything he's ever done -- has a rugged, haunting beauty. The same goes for the movie.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Though conventional in many respects, it feels like no other boxing film ever made, due largely to Eastwood's unmistakable presence on both sides of the camera.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Michael Atkinson
All the same, Eastwood's point of view has been seasoned enough to locate poignancy and respect for his protagonists where you least expect -- saying it's an old man's movie is a serious compliment.
Read Full Review >Empire Colin Kennedy
To steal from Ali, this one floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
With his trademark spare, unfussy direction and jumping into the story approach, Eastwood subtly establishes the themes of faith, loss and love and then he raises the drama to a different level.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
It is thoughtful, unfashionable, measured, mostly honest, sometimes clumsy or remote, often exciting, occasionally moving and eventually surprising. It's correct.
TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Eastwood's slow-building story of loss and deliverance is a fine, understated piece of storytelling that earns every emotional body blow it lands.
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
If we can watch this picture at all, it is because this universally admired person (Eastwood) is in it.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
In a boxing soap-opera way, Eastwood is trying to do for himself as a performer what Sergio Leone did for him in a spaghetti-western way: douse his rough-hewn banality with reflected emotional coloration.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
It's impressive, in the sense that a sucker-punch impresses itself on your skull.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Charles Taylor
A compendium of every cliché from every bad boxing melodrama ever made, Million Dollar Baby tries to transcend its cornball overfamiliarity with the qualities that have long characterized Eastwood's direction -- it's solemn, inflated and dull.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.8 (out of 10) based on 380 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Craig S. gave it a10:
For those of you saying the movie is too "depressing" I would like to know how on earth that makes it a bad movie. For god's sake, some of you have given it a 2, simply because it was too depressing. Maybe the fact it had such a huge impact on you is evidence that it had the desired effect? Not all great movies are endlessly life-affirming.
Nicholas R. gave it a10:
The viewer scores on this movie are ridiculous. Please, some of you. Grow a brain.
Bhivesh B. gave it an8:
The Academy Awards' jury has a tendency to favour those dramatic motion pictures that feature protagonists' lives opersating on many levels. Million Dollar Baby is the winner of Best Motion Picture of 2004 at the 77th Academy Awards, besides winning three more Oscars including the one for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, played by Hilary Swank. But for me this movie is chiefly about the anguished life of its male protagonist, Frank Dunn, a senile boxing trainer trying to make amends for his disturbing elusive past. He is guilt-ridden and attends the Mass everyday. He writes to his (estranged) daughter every week, hoping for a reconciliation with her. And we do not have to wait for long until we find out that his other actions are equally unclear. Their motive(s) is/are never described: (1) He is shown as attending the Mass for twenty-three years, but why he keeps pissing off the Father by asking real inane religious questions is never hinted at. (2) What is the reason behind his constant attempt to learn Gaelic? We cannot come close to even guess that. Is it his hobby-horse or is it just another minute revelation connected to his unknown past? Answer for yourself. (3) Why does Frank try to prevent Willie Jones to have his shot, until the latter loses his patience and finally leaves the old trainer ending eight-years of their professional bonding. But one thing ramains clear: Frankie's life experiences really proves that if a life's course is that of his, then indeed "Tough ain't Enough". What is required in addition to toughness is endurance-an endurnce to fight with your inner demon, to be able to sustain by grappling with melancholy memories, haunting thoughts and a hopeless existence. Frank Dunn painstakingly manages to do that. What really thrilled me about this movie are not the boxing fights, most of which I believe have been handled amateurishly, but its intense climax. You just quietly (and sadly) watch Maggie's physical condition going from bad to worse, ultimately reaching a deadlock when her existence only indicates a virtual endless death-in-life experience. This calls for her release in euthanasia, which is given to her by Frank thus increasing his own anguish to its highest level. The act leaves Frank alone and despair, gloomy and with probably a single hope to attain absolution, sooner than later. But till that hope sustains, he attempts to find a little peace at "a place set in the cedars and oak trees, somewhere between nowhere and goodbye. But that's probably wishful thinking." This psychologically motivating and emotionally engaging movie is worth a watch. Strictly recommendable!
Matt F. gave it a3:
I thought that this film was well-made; beautiful direction from Clint Eastwood and terrific performances from everyone in the cast. However, I had some problems with some of the material. The depiction of poor people in the film was ignorant and offensive; Haggis seems to think that all poor people are white-trash slobs who don't even care about their loved ones. Also, the film seems to think that one is better off dead than paralyzed, I suggest that Paul Haggis views "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," the best film of 2007, and a much finer picture than this one.
Shayne R. gave it a9:
Any movie that can achieve such depth of character deserves greater respect than this movie seems to be getting. There are three major characters all of which are amazingly realistic!
Ken L. gave it a0:
If there were a prize awarded for the largest collection of whopping fat cliches in a movie, this maudlin mess would win hands down over any movie in recent memory. It would also break the needle off the sentimentalometer. It's all served up with the straightest of faces, a classic recipe for unintentional comedy. Yes, that's right, when maggie somehow manages to suffer a broken neck at the the hands of a malicious stool, i laughed. Whilst all around me, the sound of sniffling noses signalled breaking hearts by the score. perhaps someday when the impenetrable eastwood mystique finally begins to dissipate, people will awaken as if from a dream and say, “wow, i can't believe i ever thought this was anything but steaming poop.”
Astrid F gave it a2:
Sorry, this is totally unbelievable. What a sentimental mess from beginning to end. I am trying to write something nice about this, but Mr Eastwood, I love you and therefore I forgive you for this.
