Chris Rattue: Brutal world of ring breeds a masterpiece

Throughout his film Million Dollar Baby, Clint Eastwood's fit but haggard boxing trainer Frankie Dunn is in danger of reaching a place where he has nothing left to give.

His mate Eddie "Scrap-Iron" Dupris, played by Morgan Freeman, is a conscience for the old trainer and the film.

Scrap-Iron is also the guardian angel and enabler for a hillbilly wannabe boxer played by Hilary Swank, who persuades Dunn to train her.

Scrap-Iron, who gently narrates the film in a mysterious monotone, reckons: "Everybody's got a particular number of fights in 'em - nobody knows what that number is."

It is not the physical rigours of the ring which have drained Frankie Dunn. The fights that have wasted his spirit are decisions he has made, and an inability to accept the consequences.

And in the same way, Million Dollar Baby is more about what encircles the ring than what takes place in it; it is about the relationship between three people and what drives them.

So Million Dollar Baby is not strictly a boxing or sports film, but the brutality of boxing proves the perfect place for director-actor Eastwood to produce a masterpiece.

It is Eastwood's finest film, deserving of the Oscars won, and among the best "sports" films you could wish to see.

Dunn is guilt ridden, ensnared by his past. Swank's Maggie Fitzgerald sees boxing as her way out of the gutter and can, when needed, brush off the demons visited upon her - namely a trashy family with no redeeming features. She knows that by working the punch bags and the moment, she might have a future.

The sage Scrap-Iron, once a contender under Dunn's tutelage but who now cleans the gym, has accepted his fate.

It's a film that asks a central question about what power the past has over us.

As a powerful experience that draws you in to the glorious moments movie-watching can provide, it also raises the question of why sport has not provided even more such intense theatre. It is, after all, the perfect framework for triumph and tragedy.

For sure, there have been other masterpieces. Ironically, one is Raging Bull, Martin Scorsese's 1980 landmark where Robert De Niro portrays violent boxer Jake La Motta so brilliantly. Many believe it should have won Scorsese an Oscar.

Film-making has been turned into a prizefight with the emphasis on Oscar night, and Eastwood's boxing hit has happened to deliver a one-two punch to Scorsese's latest contender, The Aviator.

Where else, though, apart from Million Dollar Baby, do we find a sports-related movie which makes intense human connections far beyond the simple smack of leather upon skin?

The 1971 made-for-television film Brian's Song may come closest, even though it has none of the cinematic or artistic claims of big-screen offerings like Million Dollar Baby and the English classic Chariots of Fire.

Brian's Song is widely regarded as among the best television films ever made. Like Million Dollar Baby, and unlike most TV jobs, it is understated enough to let the story and the characters do the work.

Based on the true events involving team-mates on the Chicago Bears American Football team, it gnaws at the emotions and leaves a lump in the throat.

James Caan steals the film playing the fast-talking Brian Piccolo, who urges the surly Gale Sayers - played by Billy Dee Williams - back to fitness but then finds he, Piccolo, is fighting cancer. (There is a decent but not remarkable remake, which was filmed in 2001.) It also deals with the issue of racism in sport, which was still virtually institutionalised in America in the 1960s. White Piccolo and black Sayers - who had a top career and wrote the book I Am Third, on which the movie is based - broke convention by rooming together.

What stirs the film is that it is the competitive spirit between the two which, initially, drives them together in times of trouble. This is a truth of top-level sport - winning is often the major motive, whether obvious or not.

The film has its weaknesses. The Bears football players are "throw 'em in the pool" prankster caricatures. But it hardly matters because the link between Piccolo and Sayers is all that matters. A moving film and story.

Another De Niro film, the 1973 Bang the Drum Slowly, is a baseball movie in a similar vein, although fiction. And Chariots of Fire is about as good as it gets.

But while truly great sports movies do exist, they seem rare - maybe because there are so many so-so ones. Eastwood has raised the game though.

It might be best to ignore another one of Scrap-Iron's observations in dealing here with Million Dollar Baby.

"Step back too far and you ain't fighting at all," he says.

The problem is that to reveal much more about the plot is unfair to those who have yet to see the film. Save to say that it is tragic and somehow uplifting. It also provides ample room for controversy, and might be seen by some as the Devil's work.

It is the way that director Eastwood strips Million Dollar Baby down and tells the story without distraction through three superb lead performances of captivating stillness that makes this film so memorable. That, plus a great story and lighting.

It also shows that, through film, sport can contribute nourishment that the game - in a cynical, egocentric, money-dominated era - often fails to provide.

And away from the darkness of the theatre, it is also inspiring to know that a 73-year-old film-maker still has so much to give.