I didn't read any critic's reviews other then their headlines, which pretty much all of them said Best Movie of the Year again, and now that I've seen it, a whole month after its limited release, I agree, Million Dollar Baby is the best movie of the year, and sorry to Martin Scorsese, but Clint and the movie deserve that Oscar.

I wont describe the plot now because I'd have to give away the whole movie, so I'll just say that it's a powerful human drama set in the world of boxing. No need to say more, as it is the performances what make this movie so great.

Clint Eastwood, who didn't show his face last year in Mystic River (his previous movie, which won his star Sean Penn an Oscar) is back in front of the screen and he's great. He didn't get a Golden Globe nomination, and he also got kind of forgotten by the rest of the critic and their awards, but when Oscar called his name last week and put his name in the list of Best Actor nominees, Jamie Foxx's sure bet just didn't seem so sure. Clint's performance here ranges from warm and paternal to unstable and devastated. It's an epic performances, which Foxx also gave us so whoever wins, it'll be deserved.

Hilary Swank won the dramatic Golden Globe this year, and many of the critic's awards, and though I haven't the other two frontrunners to get the Best Actress award (Vera Drake's Imelda Staunton and Being Julia's Annette Benning) I just can't see how they can be better than Swank's performance. Another powerful character that Swank makes perfect from beginning to end.

Then we have the beloved Morgan Freeman, whose performance is once again great. His counseling and advising seems like something he's played before, but it's so much deep here.

Still, if one of this movie's actors needs to be left out on getting an Oscar, this is it. Not because he's not as good as Clint and Hilary, but because his part is smaller, and I think it lacked the final punch that the other two delivered.

Clint Eastwood knows he's a genius, and he got the best of the best for this movie, and nobody better than him, Swank and Freeman to make this perfect. Perfect direction, perfect acting, a perfect score that Eastwood himself composed, and a perfect story adapted by Paul Haggis from stories by F.X. Toole.

The movie ends violently and heartbreaking, though not in their conventional ways, and it ends with a big punch that hit me, and it hit me hard.

Written by Hakeem
MoviesOnline Contributor