From avenging angel to benevolent god...

Rating: 6/10 (5 March 2005)

In examining a career of five decades and about five dozen movies, it isn't difficult to find within Clint Eastwood's body of work examples of glorified, mindless brutality. Through the spaghetti westerns, Dirty Harry films, war films and assorted thrillers, it would a daunting task to calculate just how many lives have been cinematically snuffed out by Eastwood's various alter egos. The body count must be staggering. With few exceptions, violence and death are given elements, indeed, trademarks of Eastwood's work.
Yet, from that collected carnage, it would be difficult to find even one example of a death that was treated with anything resembling compassion or regret. That makes the ending of MILLION DOLLAR BABY so stunningly poignant -- and yet strangely predictable. Once again a character dies at Eastwood's hands, but the death does not come easy nor is it a moment of violent glory or a display of justice as an ironic joke. Death becomes a moral choice, not a reflex action or an act of calculated revenge. BABY stands virtually alone in suggesting that life has value and its loss is a genuine tragedy.
But it is very late in the film that BABY gains any gravity. Mostly it is a well-acted, nicely photographed collection of boxing movie clichés. Father-figure boxing trainer Eastwood reluctantly takes under his wing an untrained, but plucky athlete and gruffly guides her to the championship. Making the would-be contender a female gives the film a slight nudge toward freshness, but it really makes surprisingly little difference in how the story is told. Even the parent-child relationship is not based on gender so much as on plot contrivance.
The film teases us with references to past mistakes and an estranged daughter, but vital aspects of the older man's life never get resolved. But if we get a too cryptic backstory on Eastwood's Frankie Dunn, the film supplies too much information about Swank's Maggie Fitzgerald. The fact that the film works at all is due primarily to Hilary Swank's ability to infuse a potentially one-note character with depth and complexity. Giving us an authentic interpretation of "white trash" trying to literally fight her way out of poverty, Swank's wonderful performance is so nicely self-contained, so complete, that the addition of her kin as abusive, uncaring, greedy Ozark trailer park hillbillies seems not only unnecessary, but stereotypically insulting.
As a film unto itself, BABY is Maggie's story; a bittersweet tale of persevering optimism crushed by cruel fate. It seemingly preaches that the journey to victory is as meaningful as any victory obtained. Going the distance, as it were; even if fate unexpectedly shortens the journey. In this context, the film is sad, yet strangely uplifting.
Even so, most of the film is simply trite. But it does at least set up the emotional bonds that link the characters and gives the film's finale its dramatic oomph. A film of no great insight suddenly risks controversy, tackling the issue of assisted suicide. You have to admire Eastwood for even approaching such an issue, even if the script does stack the deck in favor of it's chosen outcome. To a great degree, it isn't a film about boxing at all, the sport being only a backdrop and a not-so-subtle metaphor for life in general. But by dwelling on the build up to the big bout, the filmmakers short change and cheapen the ultimate focus of their narrative. The film approaches the controversial moral issue almost like an afterthought.
As actor and director, Eastwood has made a career out of glorifying killers, whether he is playing a cop, a soldier or gunslinger. But in the 1990's, the one-note Eastwood film image took on a degree of complexity with films like UNFORGIVEN, A PERFECT WORLD, IN THE LINE OF FIRE and most notably, THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY, a film that is most shocking because it is devoid of physical violence. Otherwise, even as his characters espouse a growing philosophical distaste for violence, they nonetheless end up killing.
Now, Eastwood is once more playing a killer, albeit a reluctant one. Though BABY seems like it is light-years removed from the sadism and nihilism of DIRTY HARRY, once again we have a protagonist, living in a violent world, who is given a set of circumstances where taking human life is to be assumed as a logical, and possibly heroic, action. Whether playing a rogue cop snuffing out a serial killer or a saintly father easing a child's pain, as likely as not, Eastwood's characters find reasons to kill. Like Harry Callahan and William Munny and Josey Wales and the "Man With No Name" and so many other Eastwood protagonists, Frankie Dunn becomes a man of violence, a man who's acts of violence are romanticized and rationalized as heroic deeds.
If viewed as part of Eastwood's total filmography, the film is more depressing than merely sad, more cynical than tragic. Again we have an Eastwood character who can only solve problems through violence. Seen as an individual act, Maggie's death has a stunning impact. Seen as a new variation on Eastwood's usual shtick, euthanasia seems like just another excuse for Eastwood to portray a noble assassin. And again, Eastwood's character rides off into the sunset, a mythic figure, alone, but unpunished and outside the law. Even though Frankie actually struggles with the morality of killing, he still kills. It is as if the struggle against doing something wrong, in the end, justifies doing it. And instead of defining him as a murderer, the ethical struggle elevates him from avenging angel to benevolent god.
As such, MILLION DOLLAR BABY manages to be both optimistic and opportunistic, deeply moving and coldly calculating, morally thoughtful and cruelly amoral. It offers a noble fight, but it's rigged.