k8cre8 | Million Dollar Baby

This weekend, trying to catch-up with watching the Oscar nominated films for future Word of the Day stories, I watched Million Dollar Baby, which took home the gold. I decided it can do double-duty, and I’d review it this week.

This is a movie I’d actually have difficulty recommending. On the one hand, it’s a well-made film; Clint Eastwood is a very talented director. The images are meaningful, the performances strong, the music evocative, the script strong. But, the movie still feels almost like a failure to me.

The movie introduces us to the character of Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), an optimistic woman who comes from a family that can only be described as “white trash.” She’s worked hard all her life, and will not stop until she’s achieved her dream of being a boxer. She refuses to take “no” for an answer, especially from Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood), a skilled trainer, who is somewhat overprotective of his fighters.

Over time, of course, he trains her, she becomes successful, and, he arranges a title fight for her.

At this point, I’m going to jump into the spoiler-y section of this review, because, it’s the events starting with the title fight that I’m disappointed with, and to discuss this, I’m revealing the movie’s end. Stop reading if you’d like to watch without knowing the end.

At the title fight, Maggie faces a woman who fights dirty. They all knew this going into the fight, but, boxing’s not a sport for the faint of heart. On the verge of taking the title, Maggie turns to go to her corner, when she’s punched in the face, and then falls onto the stool, resulting in a terrible injury to her spine, and leaving her paralyzed from the neck down. After the injury, her suffering is magnified by her greedy, disapproving family, and the amputation of her left leg due to gangrene contracted from bed sores. At this point, she asks Frankie to help her commit suicide.

Frankie, who loves her, finds this to be a reprehensible act, but, in the end, he bows to her wishes, as Maggie is the closest thing to family her has left.

And, here’s where I’m disappointed. Throughout the movie, Maggie is the fighter who wouldn’t give up. Nothing was going to beat her. It’s one of the movie’s main themes until, when it became too hard, she gives up, and drags Frankie with her. Frankie, whose own real daughter hasn’t forgiven him for some unknown sin he committed against her, wants Maggie to live, to conquer this latest challenge in her life. He believes in her, and while he’s not fooling himself about the severity of the hurdles in her life, he believes, as did the audience, that Maggie could beat this problem. But, she gives up.

Now, I’m not going to say that I’d expected a happy ending, or some saccharine ending which has everyone happy and smiling, but in this case, suicide was the easy way out, and seemed to contradict the strength of the character that was Maggie Fitzgerald.

In the end, this is a well-crafted film, with an ending that seemed too pat, and was ultimately, to me, a disappointment.