Clint packs a big punch

Anyone who doesn't believe that Clint Eastwood is one of the best film-makers in America ought to see Million Dollar Baby. And anyone doubting that he is also one of the best screen actors should watch him as the veteran boxing trainer he plays in the film. He has never done anything better as actor or director. Million Dollar Baby is a model of what a commercial yet non-dumbed-down Hollywood film should be.

On paper, the story looks littered with sporting clichés. There is the old trainer on his uppers reluctantly taking on a young, totally inexperienced boxer who spends so much time in his dilapidated gym that he's irritated beyond measure. There's the halfblind, equally broken ex-pugilist who cleans out the place and remembers his days as a contender; and the predictable moment when the young boxer persuades the trainer to take on the hopeless task of management.

Finally, there's the sudden realisation that the boxer has a punch in a million and could go a long way further than anyone thought. Rocky didn't come more obvious than this.

But, hold on, this boxer is a woman - a waitress from a trailer-trash family who is already 30, too old to start fighting. That's a turn-up for the book, and so is a screenplay from Paul Haggis that turns the obvious into gold. But principally it is the actors who give the film its power.

Eastwood, looking more and more like Henry Fonda and acting with the same precise sense of timing, traverses his part more or less perfectl; Morgan Freeman, as the veteran boxer, brings a quiet dignity and ironic humour that is totally convincing; and Hilary Swank, as the ingenue fighter, shows just why she won an Oscar in 2000 for Boys Don't Cry.

I am not even going to hint at what happens when the girl gets a chance at the title because the shock needs to be kept a secret. The first half of the film is supremely well handled, gripping without being melodramatic and, suffice to say, once the secret is out, it changes gear, turning from easy but marvellous entertainment into something else entirely, handled with great sensitivity.

Eastwood doesn't mess about as a director. His style is plain and unarty but seldom misses a trick - redolent of the good old movies he so much admires. Nor does he avoid the danger of controversy at a time when almost everyone else is trying for feelgood endings.

There are, it is true, a few drawbacks. The boxing scenes make the sport seem more dramatic than it is; and was it necessary to have the old boxer take on and knock out the brash young middleweight whom he sees beating up the mentally challenged young man who is allowed to train in the gym? But these are minor points.

Though a sports film, Million Dollar Baby will appeal to a wider audience. It could be Eastwood's second Oscarwinning-film - Unforgiven won best director and best picture awards in

1993. It is an object lesson in how to make a popular movie with something to say, and if you can get three performances as good as those of Eastwood, Freeman and Swank, it's the kind of bonus that makes a movie all the more memorable.

****

Million Dollar Baby
Cert: 12A