Don’t be put off. This superb film is not light, trite or funny as it's silly title suggests. Rope Burns, its working title, would have been fine. More importantly: boxing is its context, not its subject. Even if you hate boxing, you can still enjoy this movie. And it is worth the gamble.

Patti Smith - Trampin', Brian Wilson - Smile, Buffy Sainte Marie - Coincidence and Likely Stories; and for me Martin Scorcese - Age of Innocence. After years of developing and refining their talent, some creative people come up with a work of mature, consummate authority, that fully expresses their artistic skills. After several close calls, including the over-praised Unforgiven and Mystic River, Clint Eastwood finally makes it with MDB. Typically, the film is lean, austere, perfectly honed and powerfully directed in every sense. There is not a single shot in MDB that is not edited to a heartbeat. Editor Joel Cox, has worked with Eastwood on every film he has made and I doubt there is a better editing team currently working in Hollywood.

The perfect, mood matched, original music was also written by Eastwood and literally underscores the action with impressive subtlety. Claustrophobically set, dark and broodingly lit, there is not a wasted word or a jarring note in an intense, moving story of love, friendship, and courage. Its unsentimental fatalism is also pure Eastwood, certainly the Director, and perhaps the man.

And so - the acting. Primarily a three-hander, Morgan Freeman and certainly Eastwood himself have never been better, and that's saying something given their impressive track records. No uneasy 'against age' acting here, both inhabit their seniority with truthful honesty rigorously tested by implacable, unwavering, almost forensic, close-ups. This is critical for the depth and resonance of the relationship between Eastwood's Frankie, reluctant trainer to Hilary Swank's feisty Maggie, not to be undermined by a queasy sexual ambiguity.

Swank has the biggest challenge of course: her sinewy, honed body recalling Linda Hamilton in The Terminator, this is no 'girl boxer' tongue-in-cheek parody. Swank gives trailer trash Maggie, a convincing strength of character and gutsiness, in and out of the ring. The truthful, three-way relationships between these credible characters, are essential to the successful avoidance of mawkishness and sentimentality in the later parts of the film.

By instinct, I think Eastwood would have ended the film 5 minutes earlier, but the coda does round it off tidily and unlike Unforgiven, does not subvert what went before. This is a moving, absorbing film with great authority, in which all the key cinematic skills are put seamlessly to the service of telling a good story with clarity and absolute directness. Don't miss it.

Zettel 2004

Just saw this in your Walters and hadn't heard of it. (agree about the iffy title) Will look out for it now. Convincing review, Z.

E

<Added>

It's not out here till 25th March - that's why...

Hi E

Posted the review first becasue it is an excellent film, but also because the silly title and boxing context might have put people off.

Regards

Z

By instinct I think Eastwood should have cut the schmaltz - the early scenes with Swank in the gym and the later ones at her bedside - and concentrated on resolving the issue that drives the film - his relationship with his daughter. Any armchair psychologist could see that each had found in the other a substitute for the person they each missed most in the world (a daughter and a father), but given that the narrative begins and ends with Freeman writing to Eastwood's daughter, it's sheer laziness that this wasn't dealt with. That said, all three principals were so mesmeric that one was quite happy to suspend disbelief through silly hillbilly vignettes and unlikely fights to cheer the ending - the one real act of bravery through the whole thing:-) Shyama

Hi Scoops

Certainly agree about the ending - as I suggested, I think Eastwood by instict would have ended 5 minutes before as Frankie leaves, silhouetted in the door to the hospital.

Don't agree about the daughter thing - it isn't for me what drives the movie, it's just a subtext that adds something to his realtionship with Maggie. That story, would I think have been trite. He let a simliar back story into Absolute Power and it just took up time and slowed the pace.

For me the film is about multi-layered friendships centred on a shared respect for a challenging activity demanding a kind of courage, however unworthy we may feel that activity to be. The failed relationship with his daughter works I think by adding tension as to whether he is going to screw it up again. Not schmalzy for me but you pays your money and you takes your choice I guess.

Regards

Zettel