The Oscar nods are out and a forerunner among them is “Million Dollar Baby”, Clint Eastwood’s latest tale of guilt and subsequent redemption.

It tells the story of Frankie, an aging boxing trainer who’s the best “cut man” the narrator (Morgan Freeman) has ever seen, Scrap (Freeman) an aging boxer now working as a janitor at Frankie’s gym, and Maggie (Hillary Swank) a white trash waitress who believes she can be a boxing champ. The film is a typical underdog/ loser makes good story that has always worked well in the boxing arena, but that story is only a small piece of this puzzle. What is the main point is typical Eastwood material-someone with tremendous guilt, that person’s attempt to purge the guilt, and the anti-climactic events that usually surround the purging. I wanted to like this film. I love Eastwood’s dark sense of film. His characters float in and out of shadows, often speaking with no face visible. The subject matter is as bleak as the shadows and always deals with human suffering, a theme as ubiquitous as the loser taking the championship. Eastwood takes a distant role as director here, and attempts to just show the events as they unfold, as if the course of fate is cast and this film exists only to document the events. Freeman’s narration mirrors this distance with a “just the facts” delivery. It doesn’t work though as there are too many side plots needed to move the narration along and I don’t feel that the characters and their plots are developed well. Particularly annoying is the priest that Frankie has visited every day for twenty-three years. It seems as if the priest was created just to deliver a few insightful lines, and if that is the case, it contradicts the “fate” aspect of these characters path. There is no one out of place in this film. No one is veering off-course and consequently this film never seems dangerous to either the audience or to the characters. It is just a series of events that cannot lead the characters anywhere but back into the shadows from whence they came. I suppose that is how life really is, and at times Eastwood’s style reminds me of Carver or Altman, but he’s just too rooted in Hollywood to break from the style that makes this film seem so contrived. I won’t talk about the final thirty minutes so as not to give it away, but I will say it follows the theme and stays dark. It is good to see that Eastwood is still tackling the important subjects, and considering that this is really a three-character film I am impressed with his prowess; but I think the film would have been better served with a little more esoteric touch, something to give it more of a stage feel that could counteract and actually embrace the contrived nature of the film. Better than most but not the best of the year.