Powerful and mostly understated film-making ('mostly' because it's a bit weighed down by some of the voiceover material at the start, and occasionally by the hints as to Frankie's past, though both are, I guess, necessary for the integrity of the film as a whole) - this is very, very good. For a film in which boxing plays such an important role, Million Dollar Baby is surprisingly quiet and still - there's very little in the way of external flamboyance or pyrotechnics, either physical or emotional. Instead, events just sort of unfold, one after another, and the story (straightforward, measured, inexorable) and the main characters (battered, on the margins of society, decent) are left to carry the load, and come up trumps.
It's quite meticulously constructed, and the acting in particular is excellent. Ole Clint, of course, has shown himself a master of these kinds of character studies in the past, and does it again here, while Hilary Swank is, as ever, excellent; Morgan Freeman also does the job in unobtrusive style. If only I hadn't already known the twist that the film would take, and its outcome, the emotional punch that it packs probably would've been even intense; even as it is, I felt myself carried along by the story, and was prompted to think afterwards about what I would've done in Frankie's position (it's relatively unusual for a film or book to trigger those sorts of reflections on my part).
(I don't think that Million Dollar Baby really takes a stance on that vexed question of euthanasia - once it gets to that point, it strikes me more as a rather sensitive presentation of the issue without any particular polemical intent - but that opinion may, to some extent, be attributable to my being guardedly in favour of legalising 'assisted death'...possibly opponents of the practice would be more inclined to see the film as quite clearly pro-euthanasia (and, if I remember correctly, many of them did at the time that this film first hit the multiplexes).)
