Passion of the Boxer

Rating: Null/10 (29 January 2005)

Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), the Million Dollar Baby of the film's title, becomes bigger and more heroic as the camera gets more cruel. Capturing her pure energy before Maggie loses her million dollar bout to her opponent's dirty tactics, director Clint Eastwood captures Maggie's Christ-like, more than Christ-like dimension, as she lies in a Rehab bed, her spinal cord damaged, her dancing boxer's legs destroyed by bedsores.
As Maggie's trainer Frankie Dunn (Eastwood in a revelatory performance) gradually comes to understand, she has the shine  the glint and glimmers of passion and physicality, of sexuality and a girl's raging hormones. And she turns all that into the sport of boxing. Maggie remains relentlessly "pure" and warm throughout the film, even as she is clearly dying.
Frankie's love around Maggie's dislocated body is dramatically reinforced by the repulsive greed of her mom (Margo Martindale) trying to dupe her daughter. In a horrific scene, Earline sticks a pen into Maggie's mouth as if it's a lollipop. Earline doesn't give a damn about her girl, her passion for boxing, or her compassionate need to pull her family out of poverty. She just wants Maggie to sign over the money she earned in the ring.
Million Dollar Baby opens with Maggie seeking out Frankie, her sublimated Daddy. Although at first, he won't have anything to do with "a girl boxer," he finally lets himself be seduced and becomes the conduit to her passion. He brings out her boxer's strength. Then comes the blindness of love, of admiration.
Frankie overshoots the mark by taking her to a category she might not be ready for, and from trailer park America to the World. But he gives her a stage for her grace and glory. She moves into the arena of her final match like a bride in a silken emerald hooded robe. She is offered to the crowd. The opponent arrives, all concealed in blue and black, wily and intent on killing. This is a million dollar match. The game is dirty and brutal.
At the end, Frankie's guilt is unbearable. He tries to give her what he can. But the truth is that she is maimed, and she's dying. A priest (Brian O'Byrne) advises Frankie to walk away from her desire to die, using reason and precepts. He is in the ivory tower of the Church. He does not see actual suffering, a proof of which is painfully clear when Maggie bites her own tongue to make herself bleed to death.
In concert with his other films about suffering and ambiguous redemption (Bird, Mystic River), Clint Eastwood touches us with an unexpected force in this tragedy of destiny.