Million Dollar Baby

Hey Hillary Swank from Million Dollar Baby.

I looked her up on IMDB because I wanted to see where she had made her name and I only knew one other film that she had been in which was 'Freedom Writers' and that was an inspiring and truly fantastic film. I had high hopes before watching this film.

I wasn't disappointed by her- not by a long way. Hilary Swank's ability to radically transform herself from the beautiful woman that seemed almost like a delicate flower in 'Freedom Writers' to a no- nonsense, ass-kicking boxer in a time when female boxers were hard to find and no one really considered them to be worth anything was a huge sign of encouragement for the industry.

I have really had to eat my words with the blog this year. Last year I watched 'Dirty Harry' and I said that if you had seen one Clint Eastwood film then you had seen them all and so far this year, I have watched three Clint Eastwood films and been proved wrong on three occasions.
If i saw more than one western film with him staring in then i probably wouldn't want to eat my words because most westerns are the same, the same plot, the same actors and once you've seen one, you've really seen them all. Gran Torino was different, it was an older Clint Eastwood and exploited the more almost 'Dirty Harry' character that we had seen before but it didn't quite capture it all. I remember Clint Eastwood in that film very well and I was impressed with how different he was.
This portrayal was similar to Gran Torino. The character had so many similar traits but because the story was different, the character was different. There was more to Eastwood in this role than there had been in Gran Torino, this time he coaches a woman to at least moderate success.

I feel like I should mention that this film made it on the list because it had Morgan Freeman in it. I love Morgan Freeman and have yet to find a film in which i don't like his performance. It doesn't matter if I am supposed to like the character or not, I have never been able to criticise his performance and I can't with this film either. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't breath-taking like Meryl Streep in 'The Iron Lady' but it was perfect for the character and did the job that it needed to do. I don't want to waste time typing about him because I have already done that in all my other posts about his films.

This isn't one of those classically great films but it is a film with a vision and a mission and a cast that are more than capable of delivering it superbly and I applaud them all for that.