By Tom Donelson
As both an actor and director, Eastwood has always explored the darker side of human nature- even when he was the hero. In his most recent movie, Million Dollar Baby, Eastwood plays a boxing trainer, Frankie Dunn, who reluctantly agrees to train a female boxer Maggie Fitzgerald played by Hillary Shank.
Morgan Freeman, who plays an old retired fighter Scrap, is the narrator and as we find out in the end; his narration is a letter being sent to Dunn’s estranged daughter. Boxing is one sport that can be used as a metaphor for life for boxing is a rough and tumble businesses where wealth, riches and fame only comes to the very few. Scrap is more typical of a fighter’s life as oppose to Oscar De La Hoya. He has spent all his money and he lives at Dunn’s gym. As for Dunn, he is a brilliant trainer but he is a reluctant warrior when it comes to managing his fighters. He is over cautious and rarely takes chances with his fighter- only looking for the perfect fight, which never seems to come. In the beginning of the movie, he loses his top prospect to another manager when the young fighter realizes that he may never get his chance for a title while training with Dunn.
Maggie Fitzgerald is a struggling waitress who wants to be a fighter and views this as her chance for glory, wealth and fame. As Scrap notes, boxing is the one sport where the fighter is the one with the dreams that no one else shares or believes. Maggie believes that under Dunn, she can be a champ. Dunn views women boxers as sideshow but after losing his prizefighter and prodding by Scrap, decides to train Maggie.
What we see is a relationship that bonds into a daughter-father relations. Maggie’s own family uses her as their meal ticket but really don’t care for her beyond that. Maggie loves her family but the love is not returned . The only family member that appeared to care about Maggie was her father. Dunn is estranged from his daughter and while we don’t know why, we feel Dunn’s lost over his daughter love. As his Priest tells him in a crucial scene at the end of the movie, that the fact that he showed up for Church for 23 years details a man whose pain is too much for him to bear alone. A pain related to a daughter that he never hears from or see.
The movie takes on the quality of rags to riches story but it ends tragically. Just as Maggie appears to be winning the big championship fight, she is nailed with a shot after the bell that sends her to canvas and paralyzes her. From this point, the dreams all go up in smoke and Dunn, Scrap and Maggie are left with new decisions about their lives.
For Maggie, she finds out for certain about who really cares about her- Dunn or her family. As for Dunn, he loves Maggie as a daughter and now his surrogate daughter is asking him to kill her to relieve her of the misery of living on a respirator for the rest of her life. Dunn is a devout Catholic and he refuses Maggie at first. Scrap takes Maggie side and Dunn reluctantly agrees. Dunn ask his Priest for permission or forgiveness to allow him to aid in Maggie’s death. The Priest doesn’t give him that permission and warns Dunn that if he goes through with this, Dunn will be forever lost.
There is no happy ending. For Maggie, she is relieved for as she tells Dunn; she has been to the top of her professional and heard her name being chanted. That is the memory that she carries. While Eastwood appears to favor Dunn’s decision to aid Maggie in her quest to die, Dunn is doomed as well. He leaves his gym and town never to come back. We see Dunn at a roadside diner that Maggie showed him on a trip to her home in the movie’s last scene. However as Scrap writes Dunn’s daughter, Dunn has no more love left to give. He is emotionally tapped as the Priest warned him, he becomes a lost soul. His decision carries its own cross and regardless on your view on Dunn’s action; Eastwood makes it clear that the decision scars Dunn and leaves him emotionally dead.
Scrap is left on his own with the gym. But at the end, a mentally disabled young man, who regularly trained at the gym comes with one of life’s lesson. In one scene, the young man is brutally beaten in the ring by another fighter and when Scrap stopped the fight, he tells the young man that every one loses a fight. The young man leaves the gym and disappears. At the end, he comes back and tells Scrap that he just lost a fight and he is ready to “resume his training.” No matter what life brings, there is one more fight and one more day. Every boxer can understand the message.
Eastwood directorial style is sparse and words are few but powerful. Boxing fans will appreciate the various scenes in the gym. Eastwood and Freeman gives both boxing fans and even non-boxing fans an enjoyable look at boxing 101. Eastwood has always been able to get more out of few words and expression than any other actors. There are no wasted motions and you are drawn into the drama immediately. Eastwood gruff nature is contrasted by the sunny optimism of Morgan Freeman’s Scrap and Hillary Shank’s Maggie. Shank’s Maggie has no reason to be optimistic for she is beginning her career passed the age of 30 but she believes. Her optimism is typical Americana and rubs off on Eastwood’s Dunn. While she is in the hospital, he brings a college catalog with plans for her post-boxing career. They both know at this point what her life will be like but his refusal to give up on her is not much different from her own faith that she could win a championship.
Eastwood throughout his career has explored this darker nature of heroes and villains. From his days as the man with no name in his many spaghetti Western and Dirty Harry’s films through his most recent films, Eastwood’s character are often been the counter heroes who would break a few rules to defend society from the criminal element. In Eastwood’s world and ours, heroes are flawed human beings. These heroes don’t always act heroically but in the end, they are driven to do what is right. One pundit has called Eastwood the Hemingway of Movies for his sparse ways. Maybe we should call Hemingway the Eastwood of writing.
