MILLION DOLLAR BABY by Clint Eastwood: Film Review
by Andre Soares
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Director: Clint Eastwood. Screenplay: Paul Haggis, mostly from "Million $$$ Baby," one of the six short stories found in F.X. Toole’s (aka Jerry Boyd) Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner. Cast: Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman
AGAINST ALL ODDS
Fresh off the multiple Academy Award nominee Mystic River, Clint Eastwood has gone on to tackle the ups and downs of the boxing world in Million Dollar Baby. Despite the cheery title, this is not the usual Rocky-esque rags-to-riches story of the determined underdog who inevitably becomes a super-topdog once she (yes, in this case it’s a “she”) puts on her gloves, jumps into a boxing ring, and starts using other women as punching bags. About two-thirds into the film, Million Dollar Baby takes a radical turn toward tragedy that is as unexpected as the rest of the film is predictable. Once the dust is settled, however, even that last third quickly derails into the same sentimental mush we had been fed earlier. Ultimately, this slow-moving, contrived film—which never quite makes up its mind whether boxing is an artful sport or a social disease—is only made tolerable by Hilary Swank’s forceful performance as the steadfast boxer.
Watching Million Dollar Baby, which is chiefly based on one of F.X. Toole’s short stories, we have the impression of having gotten two movies for the price of one. The first part of the film is the cliched Hollywood tale about the pursuit of the American Dream (or perhaps more accurately, the escape from the American Nightmare) against tremendous odds. Poor, fatherless Southern waitress Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) tries to leave behind her trailer-trash background by becoming a world boxing champ. To get there, Maggie begs and cajoles reluctant veteran coach Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) to be her guide and mentor. Frankie is a stoic man (has there ever been an emotional Clint Eastwood hero?) who, much to the dismay of the local priest, doesn’t quite grasp the concept of the Holy Trinity, and who for years has been estranged from his daughter. No points for those who guess that Frankie not only ends up coaching Maggie, but that he also becomes her surrogate father. While the dad-daughter bond deepens, Maggie punches her way to boxing-ring stardom.
In the later part of the film, we are taken to Movie Disease of the Week Land. The “disease” in this case is tetraplegia, the result of a brain injury that takes place during a fight. As we see our heroine lie paralyzed in bed, we know that sooner or later she will ask to be relieved of her suffering—sooner rather than later, we hope. When the inevitable moment arrives, the avid churchgoer Frankie must decide if he will help to terminate the life of the young woman he has grown to love as a daughter. Once again, no points are given to those who guess Frankie’s eventual choice.
Both plot segments have been told and retold countless times. In order to make them fresh, director Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Paul Haggis (Crash) would have had to add more complexity to the film’s characters, but instead they rely on hoary clichés that date back to film’s infancy. (Admittedly, part of the problem may have been the source material.) Those involve not only Maggie’s meteoric rise as a fighter and her unlikely bond with Frankie, but also Morgan Freeman’s sleepy, pseudo-philosophical narration, and the filmmakers’ inability (or, more likely, deliberate avoidance) to show us good guys who carry within them dark shades of gray and bad guys who are more than selfishness and/or cowardice incarnate. Because of the film’s near-absolute either pitch-black or shiny-white view of its characters, most of the acting falls into the trap of caricature, with Maggie’s trashiest-of-the-trash family, in particular, coming across as a living advertisement for the end of all government subsidies to the poor.
Eastwood’s raspy-voiced “good guy” must have done something truly awful to his daughter, but we are not told what that was lest he lose our sympathy. To us, he is just a good man hiding behind a façade of stoicism. The veteran actor manages to avoid turning Frankie into a caricature, even though he never fully brings his coach to life, either. Looking tired—all those Spaghetti Westerns and violent cop flicks will take their toll on anyone—Eastwood merely goes through the motions. Indeed, both he and Morgan Freeman underplay to the point that we wonder at times if those guys are still breathing. Eastwood’s sole effective moment as an actor comes in a brief sequence at the hospital, when Frankie’s tenderness toward Maggie feels touchingly genuine.
Elsewhere, Million Dollar Baby belongs to Academy Award winner Hilary Swank, who immerses herself in a role with “Oscar” written all over it—the fact that she is once again playing a girl performing “a man’s job,” even if less radically so than in her award-winning work in Boys Don’t Cry, is possibly no coincidence. As proof of Swank’s charisma, we stay with her throughout all the myriad contrivances, as she runs the gamut from brave one-round fighter to even braver hospital-bed heroine. Her Maggie may be as unrealistically fearless as she is sexless (too busy punching bags to find time for either boys or girls), but Swank’s puppy-dog eagerness is winning and in spite of great odds (the script, not the character’s poverty or family background) she brings such warmth to her role that Maggie becomes one much-too-brave fighter that is hard to resist.
Inside Million Dollar Baby there is a good movie fighting to get out. But in addition to being saddled by Eastwood’s slow-moving direction, and all those plot clichés and contrivances, Million Dollar Baby suffers from an unsure attitude toward boxing. That is perhaps the film’s most damning flaw. There is much philosophical talk about boxing being “unnatural”—because of the way boxers move, not because the sport consists of human beings using one another as punchbags to the delight of greedy bettors and bloodthirsty audiences. Maggie’s belief that she can improve her condition only by using her fists is never questioned—the way, say, any Hollywood movie would moralize if that same disadvantaged woman wanted to use other parts of her body to get ahead.
Sure, we do see some of the ugly fight wounds in closeup and Eastwood (and his sound editors) make those punches sound like bone-breaking cannon explosions, but our heroine is a heroine solely because of what she does in the ring. Maggie’s honesty, loyalty, and drive to succeed only matter because she does succeed—through her fists. She ends up a tetraplegic, of course, but, as Morgan Freeman’s narrator explains, she has also been at the top of her game, which is more than most people can say. Surely, it’s all worth it. Or perhaps it isn’t. In any case, Hilary Swank is definitely worth a look.
Synopsis:
Maggie Fitzgerald, a thirty-one-year-old waitress at a dingy Los Angeles restaurant, dreams of becoming a world boxing champion. She tries to get veteran Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) to coach her, but with no success. Frankie, who has been estranged from his daughter for years, has no desire to get himself in any way attached to a young woman—especially one who wants to perform a man’s job.
Maggie, however, will not give up. She keeps training on her own at Frankie’s rundown boxing club, and eventually starts getting some boxing tips from former boxer and current menial worker, Eddie “Scrap-Iron” Dupris (Morgan Freeman). Frankie finally succumbs when he realizes that, despite her troubled past, Maggie is determined to succeed. He agrees to train her until she can find herself a manager. Maggie is ecstatic, for she has found not only a trainer, but also a sort of surrogate father. (Her own father is dead, and she has a difficult relationship with her trailer-trash mother.)
Maggie starts learning all the tricks of the boxing trade, and though a tad too old for a beginner, she perseveres. When she finally begins taking part in boxing matches, she manages to bring down her opponents with a mere couple of deadly punches. As her technique improves, more arenas want to have her. Maggie is on her way to becoming a renowned champion. With her career in high gear, she goes to Las Vegas to fight Billie, The Blue Bear (Lucia Rijker), a German boxer with a reputation for playing dirty. Maggie stands her ground during the difficult fight, but she is caught off guard after the bell rings—the Blue Bear hits her from behind, throwing her to the ground. Maggie’s head slams against the edge of a stool.
At the hospital, Maggie is kept alive through artificial means. She is paralyzed from the neck down and is unable to breathe on her own, though she can speak. After months lying in a hospital bed, Maggie asks Frankie, who has been always by her side, to help end her suffering. Frankie, an avid churchgoer, must now decide what to do: keep his surrogate daughter alive because he needs her in his life, or free her from her pain.
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