A brutally realistic tale not suitable for all viewers

Rating: 10/10 (10 January 2007)

Hilary Swank won her second Best Actress Oscar for her performance as Maggie Fitzgerald, woman boxer, in this outstanding movie directed and produced by Clint Eastwood. Her first was for Boys Don't Cry (1999). It's clear she put a lot of work into the part and was outstanding and clearly deserved the award. The movie is one of Clint Eastwood's best. I would not however recommend that everybody see this. The latter part of the movie is brutal and the ending is not pretty.
Morgan Freeman as Eddie "Scrap-Iron" Dupris, a tough-as-nails veteran of 109 fights and owner of only one working eye, narrates part of the action as the jack of all duties at the Hit Pit Gym for boxing hopefuls run by Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood). Scrap is addressing somebody. At the end of the film we find out who (but of course I can't say). This is a nice touch that adds some depth to the theme of the movie which is the love that exists (or should) between a father and a daughter.
Clint Eastwood plays the father figure to Swank's irrepressible Maggie, ambitious trailer trash girl with a heart as strong as a bull. Eastwood's Frankie Dunn is a deeply troubled man who is continually writing to his daughter only to have the letters always come back unopened with the words "Return to Sender" on them. Apparently Frankie did something so bad that his daughter will no longer have anything to do with him. I didn't notice that we ever find out what this something was, but it doesn't matter. Frankie's character is such that we forgive him even if his daughter doesn't.
The story starts out like any one of a hundred Hollywood fight movies with the difference being the boxer is a woman. But the story does not end like a "Rocky" contrivance. Instead Eastwood and Paul Higgis, who wrote the heart-wrenching script, opt for a kind of stark realism that will not please some people. There is the sense that this could really happen and is the kind of tragedy that Shakespeare and the Greek dramatists would appreciate.
But the tragedy is not Maggie Fitzgerald's alone. It is also Frankie's. And it is Scrap-Iron's as well. If only Frankie had not trained her. If only Scrap-Iron had gone to Vegas for the title fight and been in her corner. If only Scrap-Iron had not encouraged Maggie. "If only," like so much of life, has no meaning after the fact of what actually happens. Scrap wants to believe that Maggie was the better for having really lived and had a chance at a great personal triumph; and even Maggie herself seems to at least want to believe that. Frankie however is clearly not in agreement.
At the end Frankie, who is a lifelong Catholic who goes to church every Sunday and is looking for the meaning of life, must face a terrible dilemma. Maggie asks him to do something that he cannot do, that goes against his religion. Yet he feels he must do it.
How one interprets the ending--did he do the right thing?--may very well determine whether one likes the film or not. His moral dilemma is very real and I, for one, cannot say what I would have done in his situation, and so for me the horns of the dilemma are very sharp indeed.
I quit watching boxing on TV many ago because of the way the fights excite the blood, since the point of a boxing match is to make the opponent helpless. I don't like feeling like that. This movie, in a way, perhaps accidentally, comes to the same end as many a fight: the winner goes on to another fight, and to an eventual loss, while the loser is made helpless.
Some people might be wondering what the message here is. I'm not sure, but I can tell you this: Shakespeare essentially said there is no message. Life is tale told by an idiot...in the end signifying nothing. And the existentialists will tell you that life has no meaning except for that which we ourselves bestow upon it. I guess Scrap is the existentialist and Frankie the Shakespearean.
And who is Maggie? And who is everywoman and everyman?
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)