Low Budget

Million Dollar Baby and the Right Hook

Martial art movies, dance movies, and pornography have a certain advantage. There is something physical happening beyond and above the screen representation. Even if the plot, background, special effects seem fake or artificial, even if the acting is wooden, something real happens. That “something real” often rates independent critical review, and certainly underscores the movie. Sometimes, it takes away from the movie, of course. We can get so taken up with Jackie Chan’s fight scenes, we lose track of the storyline. It can happen that a movie is elevated by the physicality of the action scenes, too. In Million Dollar Baby, Hillary Swank turns in a superb acting performance. However, I think it was her right hook that made the movie real for me. In a series of matches, over and over, she delivered a combination of punches that looked and felt real. If you’ve ever been around people training in fighting arts, you know the difference between someone who “shows” you a technique, and someone who does it. Even if the combination is delivered in the air, you can feel the power, the effect it would have if it landed. Hillary Swank delivers that feel after she develops her technique, and it makes those quick matches feel real. Clint Eastwood is a great director and I’m sure he could have made the rest of the material work anyway. But for me, I think that reality gave weight to the rest of the emotional content, defeating a lot of my mechanisms for dismissing that kind of thing.

posted by dan @ 1/17/2005 08:53:00 AM