The film does obliquely posit a new model of womanhood, one about risking the all-important beauty for a larger mission. But more than Maggie, the show actually belongs to the guilt-ridden Frankie...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 8, 2019

A heartfelt, creditable picture.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 27, 2015

I don't think it's his masterpiece, but it's a big, beautiful, sad film with unforgettable performances.

| Feb 27, 2015

Anyone who doesn't believe that Clint Eastwood is one of the best film-makers in America ought to see Million Dollar Baby.

| Feb 27, 2015

The movie is simultaneously conventional and subversive, broad and nuanced, shamelessly manipulative and genuinely moving, a cheap sucker punch and a work of real moral weight.

| Feb 27, 2015

The film is impeccably made, but more than that, the director who also composed the lovely music score, brings a rare degree of humanity to the intensely moving conclusion.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 27, 2015

I'd be amazed if Swank failed to punch her way to a serious prize after this feat; she is an extraordinary bundle of ferocity and ice.

| Feb 27, 2015

Million Dollar Baby is as close to an anti-Rocky as a sports picture ever came, but even when following familiar paths, it stakes out its own distinctively harsh territory.

| Feb 27, 2015

Not exactly a crowd-pleaser, perhaps, but a bold jab at popular film-making that catches the audience with its guard down.

| Feb 27, 2015

The only differences between this new film and its many forebears are that the young hopeful is a woman and the finish is unforeseen.

| Jan 10, 2014

As an actor, Eastwood has rarely taken on a character as complex as Frankie Dunn.

| Jan 10, 2014

Age has clenched Clint Eastwood's face tight as a fist, but he has never been more tender, vulnerable, and heartbroken than in Million Dollar Baby.

| Nov 19, 2013

It's impressive, in the sense that a sucker-punch impresses itself on your skull.

| Feb 24, 2013

It is thoughtful, unfashionable, measured, mostly honest, sometimes clumsy or remote, often exciting, occasionally moving and eventually surprising. It's correct.

| Feb 24, 2013

Barely a year after the release of Mystic River, Clint Eastwood delivers a second consecutive drama that fearlessly probes the shadows of human morality without falling back on easy answers.

| Feb 24, 2013

Perhaps the director's most touching, most elegiac work yet, Million Dollar Baby is a film that does both the expected and the unexpected, that has the nerve and the will to be as pitiless as it is sentimental.

| Feb 24, 2013

Violent Oscar winner is inspiring but too intense for kids.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 26, 2010

Like Eastwood, it's a relic that dazzles you with its footwork, daring and class.

| Aug 1, 2008

Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby is a masterpiece, pure and simple, deep and true.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 6, 2007

Quietly quite magnificent.

| Jun 24, 2006