CLINT Eastwood has got the hang of this movie-making business in his 75th year.

Million Dollar Baby is a timeless movie, a contemporary work with the look of a film of the 1940s or 1950s, and it is as if his slow-burning directing, from the understated Bird to the over-rated Mystic River, has been leading to this moment.

Eastwood not only directs and produces but also plays the craggy, stiff-limbed fight trainer Frankie Dunne, who runs the Hit Pit, a rundown Los Angeles gym that looks like it hasn't been painted since the Forties. He is cautious - his motto is "Tough ain't enough" and he has a tendency to hold back his potential champions from championship fights - but his gym is his solace.

It is also home to his right-hand man, dignified former fighter Scraps (Morgan Freeman), who lost the sight of an eye in his fighting days but consoles himself that he took his dream as far as he could.

Hopefuls and no-hopers alike train here, and the newest face to start punching the bag is white-trash Missouri waitress Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), who wants Frankie to transform her into a prize fighter as an escape route from her daily drudgery.

Frankie says he doesn't train girlies and contends that women have no place in the ring, particularly a woman of 31 who will need four years to learn the ropes, but something is nagging this complex, private man.

He attends mass nigh on every day, engaging in spiky discourses with the priest, seeking absolution from guilt and troubled by years of not seeing his daughter, with his letters always being returned to sender. He too needs fulfilment.

Maggie continues to train on her own, covertly encouraged by Scraps, who finally persuades Frankie to give her a chance, and the boss is duly magnetised by her fierce determination and sense of release as she takes on all comers en route to a world championship showdown with the dirtiest puncher on the circuit.

So far, so Rocky, but there is a sting in this tale of two halves (in the manner of Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull). I shall not reveal that sting, but Eastwood's superb story-telling makes for a magnificently emotional drama full of integrity and old-fashioned grace. His own performance is subtlety itself, Freeman's narration is full of truths, and Swank is a knock-out. Oscars await.

york twenty4seven view ****

Updated: 16:18 Thursday, January 13, 2005