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Ornery, cantankerous and abrasive, he can be especially rough on his closest friend, Scrap (Morgan Freeman), a one-eyed former fighter who lives at the gym and looks after it. Absent any family (the weekly letters he sends to his estranged daughter are always returned) and still hungry for a fighter who could go to the top, Frank has placed his hopes on a talented heavyweight (Mike Colter) who, just when he’s poised for a title shot, dumps the patient trainer who brought him to the brink of greatness for a more financially savvy manager.įrank is a complicated old guy. Toole published in 2000 under the title “Rope Burns: Stories From the Corner,” Paul Haggis’ script is centered on the low-rent but homey downtown Los Angeles gym run by old school boxing sage Frank (Eastwood). He’s got a lot on his mind - mortality, moral decisions, living with mistakes and what one makes of one’s short time on earth - and he continues to hone his filmmaking style in a way so highly refined it approaches the abstract.īased primarily on a 40-page story called “Million $$$ Baby” that was one of six brilliant short stories by veteran boxing cut-man F.X. With so much success behind him, Eastwood continues to fearlessly tackle disturbing material that offers no assurance of public acceptance. faces a similar challenge with this one to transform certain critical acclaim into winning box office. “Mystic River” greatly surpassed anyone’s commercial expectations for a genuinely downbeat film, and Warner Bros. 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.” As if “Unforgiven” and “Mystic River” weren’t grave enough, this endlessly resourceful filmmaker goes just as dark and deep in this slow-burning drama of a determined female boxer and her hard-shelled trainer, a tale Eastwood invests with rewarding reserves of intimacy, tragedy, tenderness and bitter life knowledge.