Million Dollar Baby

I had not seen MILLION DOLLAR BABY in the theater, when it quietly became all the rage among moviegoers and critics. I avoided it because, reading about it in reviews, I felt it would be overly sentimental and I am not generally a fan of sentimental Hollywood movies. Last night I watched it. It really did get me, although it was blatantly sentimental and full of cliché. But how could it not be, given the "pulp fiction" nature of the story? The acting was poetic, the cinematography also. The fight scenes were terrible and wonderful (the ancient Greeks had a word for that, "daenos." I don't like boxing. I don't have the stomach for it. But I could not take my eyes off of the screen during those short, staccato sequences. Bravo to Clint Eastwood. And to Morgan Freeman. And most of all to Hilary Swank. She is awesome.