Herewith begins the alexwayne.com campaign to derail the Oscar hopes of "Million Dollar Baby." Join with me; spread the gospel. This is a movie that sucks ass.
Clint baby, I love you to death. "High Plains Drifter;" one of my favorites. Everything with The Man With No Name; genre-defining. "Unforgiven;" deserved everything it got. I even love "Dirty Harry" and its sequels, and "In the Line of Fire" and "A Perfect World." But to tell you the truth, I haven't seen much of your work since, and maybe with good reason. This latest thing is just terrible.
Let's start with the title. Awful. It's got no ring, man. I wince to say it. And what's it mean? Is it describing the combination of Hillary Swank's medical bills and physical condition by the end of the flick? (Oh, by the way, if you haven't seen the movie, I'm going to spoil the whole goddamn thing for you. Consider it a public service; I'll save you a few bucks.)
Next, the characters. Every goddamn one of them a cliche. Grizzled old-school trainer. Washed-up almost-champ sidekick (Morgan Freeman, basically reprising his role from the far, far superior "Shawshank Redemption" -- complete with Morgan Freeman narration, for Christ's sake). Hopeful hick-chick boxer with a family that came out of central casting's definition of "white trash." Trailer park? Check. Tatoos? Check. Welfare mother? Check. No redeeming virtues whatsoever? Check.
Then the dialogue. Swank's character has this habit of calling Eastwood's character "boss." Didn't bother me until we got to this line: "They took my leg, boss." I think I wasn't supposed to laugh.
The plot, in short (and trust me, short is all you want): Eastwood loses his stud boxer to a rival manager. Swank pleads and pleads -- in her stupid, totally affected "southern" accent -- and proves herself to be a really, really hard worker and finally convinces Eastwood to train her. She of course turns out to be an awesome boxer -- knocks everybody out in the first round. Then she fights the Russian champ -- er, sorry, the German champ -- who kills her former-rival-turned-best-friend -- wait, I'm mixing up my boxing movies again -- who sucker-punches her and breaks her neck. Yeah, it's cheery. We spend the rest of the movie, some 45 of the most excruciating minutes of my life, watching Swank play a quadriplegic, plead with Eastwood to kill her, smoke out her straight-out-of-central-casting family's attempt to rip her off, and finally bite her own tongue off. No joke. Mercifully, Eastwood eventually kills her and puts an end to things.
Lots of people seem to think that this is some kind of great movie. Sports Illustrated called it the best boxing movie ever. Sure, if you hate boxing. And all of a sudden it's eclipsing "Sideways," a movie that I enjoyed but didn't really think was worth a Best Picture Oscar -- until I realized that this clunker is its opposition.
So take to the streets, loyal alexwayne.com readers, lest we suffer yet another "Forrest Gump."
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