Hilary Swank: Truly a million-dollar actress

Hilary Swank is an actress, not a star–which is why I didn’t expect her to have fan following.

But I have a friend who is a die-hard Hilary Swank fan – a Hilarian if that’s how you call someone who cheers, supports and follows the life and career of Hilary Swank.

In the film Boys Don’t Cry where she got her first Oscar Best Actress win, I immediately admired her as a performer. However, her performance there – award-winning as it was – didn’t necessarily turn me into a Hilary Swank fan. But my friend started to swoon over her – like a true Hilarian.

Around December, when everyone was so sure that The Aviator was going to bring home all the trophies at the 77th Academy Awards, my friend got so excited because Hilary Swank’s Million Dollar Baby was suddenly shown in US theaters in order to catch the Oscar cut-off period. The film was originally for release in mid-2005 yet – to the chagrin of Annette Bening (Being Julia), who lost for the second time to Swank. (Remember how they squared it off the first time five years ago – when Mrs. Warren Beatty, nominated for American Beauty, lost to Swank’s Boys Don’t Cry?) All of a sudden, everyone in Hollywood was talking of another Hilary Swank win.

When my friend told me that time that Hilary Swank plays a female boxer in Million Dollar Baby, I began to taunt him by saying that that role had been done before by silent screen star Maria Tronqued in the pre-war film Nena La Bexeadora.

In that old, old film, Ms. Tronqued is cast as a young proper lady whose family suffers from a reversal of fortunes. The only way for her to bring back the family to its former station in life is to go to the ring and fight it out. She is victorious, of course, in the end.

That is not exactly the plotline of Million Dollar Baby. Directed by Clint Eastwood, who also stars in it and even writes its music (really magnificent scoring), Million Dollar Baby casts Hilary Swank as Maggie Fitzgerald, a poor waitress, "who grew up knowing one thing: She was trash."

Although she still has family, it’s not really the type that would love you and care for you. When something really terrible happens to her toward the middle part of the film, in fact, they go sightseeing first before they even bother to check her condition.

Fortunately, she still has one thing going for her. She has a dream and this dream is to become a female boxer. For this, she approaches Frankie Dunn (Eastwood), a boxing trainer, who has had a lot of victories and frustrations in his personal life and career. He initially rejects her first because, first of all, he doesn’t train girls and, secondly, Maggie is already a bit way over the hill to be a boxer at 31.

But seeing her determination and practically almost out of pity, he takes her in and under his guidance she becomes a million-dollar baby at the boxing ring.

Although Hilary Swank plays a lady boxer in the film and gets to punch it out in quite a number of exciting boxing scenes (with Lucia Rijker, no less), Million Dollar Baby is not really just a movie about boxing. In fact, it changes themes in midstream and becomes – what do you know? I kid my friend again–Ang Tutoong Buhay ni Pacita M., the 1991 Nora Aunor film Nena la Boxedora to Pacita M. My friend wanted to punch me in the nose and was just waiting for another putdown against Million Dollar Baby from me before turning our film discussion into a boxing match.

Okay, it is closer to Spain’s The Sea Inside, Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film–I told him just to placate him.

Of course, my wisecracks against Million Dollar Baby were all in jest (just to test my friend’s patience). The truth is, it is really my bet in the last Oscar race and it rightfully deserves its Best Picture win.

While it is not as grand as Amadeus or epic-like in the tradition of Gandhi, Million Dollary Baby has its own charm. Its beauty as a film lies in its simplicity.

The scenes staged by director Clint Eastwood are all simple, basic and close to what is true. The dialogues are not over-the-top and these make for very realistic moments.

Even in the poignant scenes that are all over the film, Clint Eastwood sees to it that he doesn’t resort to cheap gimmickry that would draw tears from the audience. But the tears flow anyway.

Add to that the very moving performances of Morgan Freeman (as the narrator and a former boxer reduced to cleaning the toilets), Clint Eastwood himself (maybe he should have won Best Actor) and, yes, Hilary Swank.

Physically, you know that she prepared well for the role of the lady boxer (and how she prepared!). But it is not the rock-hard body that she displays in the film that will impress you in this film. Although you already expect a good performance from her, you will be amazed at how she tops here in Million Dollar Baby even her Academy Award-winning acting job in Boys Don’t Cry.

At this point, there is no doubt that she is already on her way to becoming one of Hollywood’s greatest actresses.

Have you noticed how I’m speaking now like a Hilary Swank fan? Well, it’s because I too have become one.