Million Dollar Baby

Review by Zachary Keith Parker

In 1994, Paul Haggis created one of this author's favorite TV shows, Due South, in which a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman teams up with a dirty Chicago detective. With a strong sense of morality, they aided the helpless, arrested criminal adversaries, and considered the human situation with an almost elementary ease.

Ten years later, Paul Haggis adapted F.X. Toole’s collection of short stories, entitled Rope Burns, into a screenplay, which Clint Eastwood then turned into an Oscar-winning film. This new story, Million Dollar Baby, provokes the audience to consider how we aid the helpless and handle with our own inner adversaries.

            While dealing out his experience to fighters, Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) runs a boxing gym, the Hit Pit, in Los Angeles. Frankie struggles with his decisions in the past. He stresses his dictum of “Always protect yourself” to his fighters, but we know it weighs significantly more in his mind than with anyone else. He loses a fighter because he does not take the fighter to any championship rounds, afraid of any possible losses. “[He] protected [himself] out of a championship.” 

            He teaches himself Gaelic poetry, writes letters to his estranged daughter every week without response, and on the weekends, he engages the Father Horvak (Brian O’Bryne) in theological debates. These debates show that Frankie does not understand how God might be working in the world, and we wonder if he is just trying to aggravate the priest or is he really concerned about whether or not God would redeem a man like himself.

With god-like presence and knowledge, Eddie “Scrap-Iron” Dupris (Morgan Freeman) narrates the movie telling us the plain details of the story, though not its meaning. Like the Norse god Odin, Scrap has only one eye (lost in a boxing match), but in return his wisdom pervades the film’s perspective of life. Moreover, Scrap’s role as Frankie’s friend and the Hit Pit’s janitor support his role as a voice of truth.

Though Frankie is not the only one with a dark past, Scrap seems to have already confronted his past, which strengthens his character. Hence Scrap becomes a “Father” to each character. He rebukes Frankie, cleanses the gym (a representation of the world), encourages the determined, protects the powerless, defeats the oppressors, and guides a woman to her calling.

A 31-year old woman, Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) has been a waitress since she was 13, and she desperately wants to fulfill her dreams of boxing. She knows she is just “trailer trash,” but she is not afraid of taking “respect” from the “other guy.” However, Frankie plainly refuses to train her, but Scrap secretly guides her until Frankie eventually concedes. Frankie arranges boxing matches for Maggie, but organizing matches becomes harder and more expensive due to Maggie’s knockout force. 

Sadly, Maggie soon finds she must protect herself from more than just opponents with gloves. Her “trash” family resents Maggie as well as any of her efforts to support them. Eventually, her family becomes nothing more than insensitive thieves. Maggie realizes all she has is Frankie, who embraces her as a surrogate daughter, naming her “Mo Cuishle.”

            In a pivotal scene, Frankie explains how “Mo Cuishle” means “my blood,” “my heart,” “my love.” Million Dollar Baby is centrally about the relationship between Frankie and Maggie, reinforced by Scrap’s wisdom. It does not wear good vs. evil labels in order for us to buy it. 

            Instead, it draws us in and shows us the depth of its protagonists, leaving us to consider its qualities. Tom Stern’s powerful cinematography casts the world in shadow, forcing us to focus our attention on the characters. How does salvation come to us, especially in similar situations?

(major spoilers contained in the following paragraphs)

            When explaining her relationship with her biological father, Maggie told a story of how her father puts their four-legged dog out its misery. In a seemingly cruel twist of fate, Maggie is rendered a quadriplegic after being dishonorably assaulted in the boxing ring. We see her life deteriorate, but Frankie remains close to her, even seeming to carry part of the blame himself.

            Eventually, Maggie asks Frankie to put her out of her misery, just like the dog. Frankie flat out refuses, but begins to personally suffer when he sees that Maggie is desperate enough to try to kill herself more than once.

At this point, Frankie once again visits the priest, imploring him through tears for advice. The priest vehemently reproves him for even considering euthanasia, telling him he cannot be forgiven for such an act. Father Horvak points out how Frankie has been coming to Mass almost every day, and the “only person who comes to church that much is the kind that can’t forgive himself for something.”

He simply tells Frankie to “Leave it [the situation] with God.” Frankie responds, “She’s not asking God.” Then Father Horvak finally tells him, “Forget Heaven, forget Hell, forget God, all those things. If you do this you'll be lost somewhere so deep inside that you'll never recover.” 

Father Horvak is not trying to convince Frankie of the moral problems of euthanasia. He is simply telling Frankie how he does not think Frankie could handle the psychological remorse; briefly disregarding God’s forgiveness, Father Horvak does not think Frankie will be able to forgive even himself. 

If you were to assemble an argument for euthanasia, then based on this movie, the argument would rely mostly on drawing in the emotions of the audience. If you were going to die a slow and painful death, would you not want to end it sooner? In an important subplot, we see how one particular character, Danger Barch (Jay Baruchel), is also seriously and deceitfully injured in a boxing ring.

Like Maggie, Danger has great dreams of being the champion of the world, though Danger has no hope at all compared to Maggie. Sadly, some of the other boxers hold Danger against his will and then beat him up severely. Scrap saves Danger, but Danger walks away, “throws in the towel.” Ultimately, Danger returns to the Hit Pit, to practice and dream of being a champion.

Danger's resurrection as a boxer seems to suggest that even when you're beaten severely, you do not surrender to the glee of mortality. Despite the potential physical and emotional loss Danger will experience as a boxer, he does not give up but continues in contrast with Maggie's wish to give up.

When asked about dealing with euthanasia, Eastwood responded:

I don't care if you're a red state or a blue state. Somebody has had some experience at some point in their life when they have thought about this sort of thing . . . . Well, people can have a dogma about a lot of things, but then you start thinking about it, and almost anybody, if they start thinking about it, realizes it would be a tough decision, no matter which side you came out on.

Eastwood obviously wants the audience to think about how they would respond to such a disturbing situation. Million Dollar Baby is an artistic and profound step in that direction. The characters and even Scrap’s narration seem to point to something more valuable when we keep fighting against all odds.

            Scrap says, “If there's magic in boxing, it’s the magic of fighting battles beyond endurance, beyond cracked ribs, ruptured kidneys and detached retinas. It's the magic of risking everything for a dream that nobody sees but you.”

Did Frankie find or lose redemption after killing Maggie? We do not know, but we see him sitting in a café, where earlier in the film he had praised their lemon marangue pie. One is left to wonder if he is there to enjoy that lemon marangue pie, “a piece of heaven,” having found redemption.

On the other hand, we might be seeing him through an indistinct window in a darkly lit building suffering from the aforementioned remorse. We only learn that all the while, Scrap has been narrating the letter he is writing to Frankie’s daughter in order to show her what kind of man he was and let her judge his actions independent of Scrap’s interpretation. 

Clint Eastwood, the film’s parallel “Scrap,” similarly wanted to show us what kind of people these characters were amidst difficult situations, which cannot always be judged with a blanket rule. As a near cinematic masterpiece, Million Dollar Baby supplies us with the best arguments for the characters’ actions and leaves us to consider them on our own.