FILM REVIEW OF MILLION DOLLAR BABY

Film Review of Million Dollar Baby

Film Review of Million Dollar Baby

About the Movie

The film derives from a short story of the same title in a collection of boxing tales? Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner? published in 2000 by F.X. Toole. Toole was the pseudonym of Gerald Boyd? who took up boxing in middle age? became a successful 'cut man' at world championship fights? and wrote stories that finally found a publisher when he was seventy years old. He died in 2002 (Wei? 2007). Toole's "Million Dollar Baby" was lost in the maze of Hollywood development deals. Anjelica Huston showed interest in directing it? according to Variety. Robert Benton pursued a project that would have starred Sandra Bullock. The paper presents a short critical review of the movie? Million Dollar Baby.

Critical Review of the Movie

Reading Toole's story after seeing the film? one may be struck by how closely Haggis's script follows its source? sometimes paragraph by paragraph? scene by scene down to lines of dialog and prose passages that crop up in Morgan Freeman's voice-over narrative. Frankie Dunn? an aging fight manager? runs the Hit Pit gym in a sleazy neighborhood a few blocks from L.A.'s downtown skyscrapers. A hillbilly waitress from the Ozarks? Maggie Fitzgerald? in her early thirties? begs him to train her. He refuses; she perseveres; he relents? maybe because she reminds him of a daughter from whom he's estranged. He calls her macushla? a variant on a Gaelic term meaning darling? my blood. Under that moniker she wins many fights? captures the hearts of Irish people everywhere? and makes real money. Her obese? welfare-cheating mother and trailer-trash siblings dun her for cash (Darlene? 2007).

Hospitalized and physically deteriorating? Maggie wants to die. She asks Frankie to kill her. He goes to confession? where the priest feels "the doom Frankie felt?" and warns him against it. He does the deed? and in the story's last sentence? leaves Maggie's room "without his soul." Don't look for redemption in Toole's Irish Catholic prose (Darlene? 2007).

What one also finds in Toole's story are the 'sexism' and 'classism' that have agitated those who deplore the movie. Toole disposes of Maggie's dreadful relations in a few spare sentences? while in the film we endure their disagreeable presence for minutes at a time (the filmmakers have even toned down Toole's disdain? eliminating a scene in the story where Frankie punches out her brother and slaps the women in the hospital parking lot). To the film's adversaries? it seems that portraying welfare recipients in other than a completely positive light supports a right-wing agenda that aims to destroy public assistance for the indigent in this country. In Toole's defense? one might argue that the family's hostility and incomprehension toward Maggie are integral to his portrait of her and Frankie's ambition? moral isolation? and soul-destroying transgression (Wei? 2007).

If nearly every aspect of Toole's story is transferred intact to the screen? it's also the case that the film significantly expands the narrative ...