There is an iron-law of film-making that every director should recognize: When the script is poor, it is impossible to create a good film. Million Dollar Baby has noble intentions. It wants to be deep. Towards the end, it surprisingly gains gravitas and you want to forget that three quarters of the movie were slow and banal, especially for a guy like myself who thinks that deriving joy from watching peeople beat each other up (boxing) is infantile. I don’t mind a martial arts film because martial arts is all about self-defense and not pointless thrashing.

Postsript January 28, 2005. Channel surfing, I discovered by chance that Clint Eastwood played a boxing lad in the 1978 comedy Every Which Way but Loose. Apparently he likes the sport so much that he wanted to turn it into a serious film.