Million Dollar Baby

—Overview
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film pdf
—Spiritual Connections

When we are confronted with a bleak reality, do we continue to hope and pursue our dreams or do we give up in despair?

That question recurs in Million Dollar Baby, an outstanding new film from Clint Eastwood about boxing and more. This theme of life’s choices circles repeatedly through the lives of the film’s three principal characters, until it crescendos with a sudden twist. The climax unleashes a powerful question that is at the heart of our culture’s debate over the value of life and a life lived well.

Eastwood, who directs the film, stars as Frankie Dunn, a hard-edged pugnacious man who is owner of The Hit Pit, a boxing gym in downtown Los Angeles. Beneath the tough exterior, we see a traditionalist who has gone to Mass every day for the past 23 years and who is teaching himself Gaelic as he reads poetry.

Yet he is a man ridden with guilt and regret, another “unforgiven� Eastwood character who is harder on himself than he is on those he loves. Yet Frankie treats his parish priest like a sparring partner, engaging in theological repartees over church doctrine – even if at time his debates border on the inane. The priest proves he can dish it out as well as Frankie, a point that becomes significant in the film’s final crisis when the priest is able to offer honest and faithful advice to Frankie on a difficult moral quandary with more than simple parroting of the church’s official line.

Scrap (Morgan Freeman) provides the film’s narrative voice, much as Freeman did in The Shawshank Redemption. A former fighter who lost his eye in a bout where Frankie was the only one in his corner, Scrap now works and lives in the seedy gym, where he seems to be Frankie’s only friend. As the film begins, Frankie loses his best fighting prospect, who finds another manager because Frankie is too cautious about letting him fight for the championship.

Into this atmosphere walks Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), a waitress in her 30s who dreams of becoming a professional boxer and wants Frankie to train her. “I don’t train girlies,� says Frankie, telling her she is too old to reach her dream in life. But for Maggie, there are no other choices. A waitress since 13, Maggie sees boxing as the one chance to escape her roots in the southwestern Missouri Ozarks, where her mother cheats the welfare system living in a trailer with Maggie’s sister, a single mother with an infant in her arms.

“She knew one thing. She was trash,� intones the film’s narrator. “Boxing is about respect. Get it for yourself; take it from the other guy.�

Swank, who won an Oscar in 1999 for Best Actress in Boys Don’t Cry, gives a very realistic performance as Maggie. Both Maggie and Frank are stubborn and persistent, but Maggie is more determined. Or perhaps just more hungry. They form a partnership that features some excellent boxing matches as we watch Maggie develop into a powerful fighter.

There have been many great films about boxers. Rocky won an Oscar for showing us the plight of an underdog. Raging Bull is perhaps the most critically acclaimed boxing film for its examination of violence, while On the Waterfront deals with the choices of a former boxer who could have been a contender.

But boxing isn’t the top bill of Million Dollar Baby. Instead the story focuses on the relationship between two friends: a mentor and a protégé, father and daughter figures who long for the restoration of family relationships they valued. We see the highest form of love develop between these two friends – a love that isn’t cheapened with stereotypical Hollywood romance, but that illustrates loyalty, devotion and respect. The film explores the depths of friendship, testing the limits of what one friend can ask another friend to do.

Million Dollar Baby received seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture along with acting nominations for the film’s three principal characters. Although The Aviator led nominations with 11, Eastwood’s Million Dollar Babywill outsoar Scorsese’s film when the Oscars are announced. It is clearly the best film I’ve seen in the past year, and perhaps Eastwood’s best ever, easily surpassing last year’s Best Picture nominee Mystic River. Yet it may be one of the year’s most controversial films for a major plot twist the film undergoes as it enters its final crisis.

Million Dollar Baby ultimately is a film about choices, especially the decisions we face when our life situations seem to have us against the ropes. Do we despair about the odds being against us or do we hope for what we dream could be possible?

For several reasons, Million Dollar Baby will raise some difficult issues for those who believe films should reinforce moral absolutes. Film does a better job of raising questions, and allowing filmgoers to wrestle with these questions themselves.

Frankie’s decisions are questioned throughout the course of the film. Is he too cautious in trying to protect his fighters? Does he fail to take appropriate risks in pursuit of a championship? Is he doing enough to try to repair a damaged relationship with his estranged daughter? His decision at the film’s climactic point already is rightly debated.

But viewers should keep in mind that, when the film ends, we don’t know how Frankie ultimately will live out his days in response to the moral dilemma he faced. Has he protected himself from guilt and regret? Or has he discovered that he, indeed, has lived his life well? Even when our values are clear, the moral choices we face are seldom clear or easy. The knockout conclusion to Million Dollar Baby will have audiences examining their own values and life choices.

—Overview
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film pdf
—Spiritual Connections