Everyone learns their lesson the hard way in Million Dollar Baby. Given that his former charge Eddie ‘Scrap-Iron’ Dupris (Morgan Freeman) was blinded in one eye in his 109th and final fight, Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) is understandably reluctant to lead another boxer to a title shot. When ‘Big’ Willie Little (Mike Colter) tires of waiting and leaves Frankie for a new manager, the ageing trainer only begrudgingly adopts aspiring waitress Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), but he quickly realises that damn, this girl is tough.
And Maggie is not the only one: everything in the world of Million Dollar Baby is tough, as Frankie spars with his local pastor, and Maggie struggles for fights after earning a series of first-round knockouts. The world is a cruel and grimy place, but the relationship that Frankie and Maggie forge offers some respite, Maggie a surrogate for Frankie’s estranged daughter, Frankie the father Maggie barely had. They travel to Europe, and the wins keep on coming, so finally Frankie succumbs to the bright lights. Maggie is to compete for the title in Las Vegas, Nevada. But her opponent, Billie ‘The Blue Bear’ Osterman (Lucia Rijker), is a German ex-prostitute, so it’s no surprise when she brutally cheats.
Maggie’s neck is broken, and she is left quadriplegic, dependent on a ventilator and bound to her hospital bed. Which is too bad for her, but so far you might think that Million Dollar Baby is doing well enough.
Yet why does Clint Eastwood’s character persist on telling Hilary Swank’s ‘Mo cushy’ as she lies ridden to her bed? Presumably this is his own shortened form of the perverted internet meme ‘More cushion for the pushin”, which implies that plumper ladies provide for enjoyable sex. Is Eastwood relishing the thought of a bed-bound ex-boxer putting on weight? It makes for a perverse and bewildering end to an otherwise gritty slice of realism. Million Dollar Baby flies through the early rounds, but winds up nothing more than an ode to Walt Disney and sick sex.
