Movie Review: Million Dollar Baby

Watch it.

It's turned into Oscar gold for everyone associated with it, and you need to know what the hype is all about when they're talking about Clint Eastwood's amazing performance, and Hillary Swank's amazing performance, and Morgan Freeman's amazing performance.

And make no mistake, these performances are great.

What irks me, however, is how such an appalling script ever got made into a movie.

I like a story that doesn't put its seams on display; as a writer, I work hard to conceal the places where I stitch my plot threads together and where, usually out of dire necessity, I use a standard plot device, I modify the heck out of it. I tend to expect the same of Hollywood-standard - hell, Oscar-standard - script writers. So shoot me.

Million Dollar Baby serves up a trite plot, at best. Or maybe it's a succession of trite plots. A crusty old boxing coach refuses to train a girl, because at 31, she's already 'too old', and because she's a girl. The girl does an Ekalavya stunt and manages to win over the boxing coach's trusted friend, and eventually impresses the old coach himself. Puh-leeeeeeeeeeeeze. How often has it been done before? Isn't it the plot of, oh, almost every darn sports movie? (Racing Stripes, Karate Kid I, even a part of Kill Bill II.)

And so we move on. Girl manages to win spectacularly at all the tournaments, and finally, she is about to fight a title match.

*******************SPOILER WARNING*********************

At the title match, she's knocked about by a champion who's famous for playing dirty. She falls, and breaks her neck on her chair at the corner of the ring, which has, for mysterious reasons, been left there turned sideways.

And that's when the second plot thread kicks in. Now the girl is a paraplegic, paralysed from neck down. All she can do is speak. She begs the old coach to please, please put her out of her misery, because she can't possibly bear it if she begins to "forget the cheering of the crowds".

The old coach wrestles with it a bit, purely for show, and kills her off.

End of story.

Subplots? Only a semblance, pathetic excuses for characters who disappear promptly after serving their allotted purpose in the main plot.

Morgan Freeman does nothing after he convinces Clint Eastwood to coach the girl - but because he's such an important 'side' character, he gets a bit of rounding off: he starts the movie thinking he's finished as a boxer, but somewhere around the middle of the movie, he knocks out a gym bully, and says something to the effect of "I've still got it in me." That's it. Trite-o-rama, or what?

Other subplots... oh God. Clint Eastwood has a priest he talks to, primarily to express his views on religion and thereby provoke a media debate, I expect. (The ploy worked.) He also writes weekly letters to his daughter, who sends back his letters unopened. So underdeveloped are these two threads that we don't even know why Eastwood goes to church (the pastor once guesses it's because he's looking for forgiveness, but hey, that's just a wild guess), and we don't even know what Eastwood did to his daughter that she's so angry with him. What a copout! I can think of a hundred things a father can do to his daughter which would justify her wanting to have nothing to do with him. But no - the old coach is such a victim, such a victim. Poor coach.

Then there's the whole euthanasia part of it. I, for one, can't imagine how anybody would even think to give in to the death wish of someone who has recently been through such a traumatic experience. Not that I believe euthanasia should be illegal, or even that suicide should be illegal: no way. But I do know that people suffering from depression often have a death wish: one that disappears as soon as the depression is gone.

And don't even try to argue with me that Hilary Swank's death wish is a permanent one. Even if it is, we never do test that theory, because the movie is in such a hurry to kill her off. Let's look at the facts, shall we?

1. She isn't in any pain.
2. She isn't going to die.
3. She can think clearly, see clearly, hear clearly and talk clearly.
4. Her medical expenses are being paid for by the Boxing Commission or whatever.

The odds of her finding something interesting to do with the rest of her life are overwhelmingly huge. Cases in point: Stephen Frickin' Hawking, who's doing spectacular things without even being able to talk; Christopher Reeve; Helen Keller.

And even for someone whose only love is boxing (i.e. she doesn't want to go to college, she doesn't want to do social work and raise awareness about spinal injuries, she doesn't want to simply sit and read all her life), there are some things that are possible: she could be a coach! She could be a motivational what-not for boxers! She could be a commentator - sure, she's white trash and sounds like it, but she is a major figure in women's boxing!

But no-oooo, she wants to die, and she wants it now, waaaaah! And pseudo-daddy is going to indulge her merest whim. Never mind that it makes him a murderer.

So much for the plot. What about the gaping logical holes and the unrealistic plot devices that pepper the movie?

1. The kind of freewheeling basher-upper portrayed by the woman who knocks out Hilary Swank does not exist - for the simple reason that there are rules in boxing, too. A foul like the one she commits wouldn't result in a point getting knocked off her score, it would result in her expulsion from the boxing community forever, in addition to penalties for damages and such. I mean, one moment you're watching a boxing match, and the next, a World Wrestling Federation fight breaks out. I half expected a boxer to pick up a folding chair and smash the other fighter over the head with it.

2. Hilary Swank starts off her boxing career with 12 straight knockouts in the first round of every match. Right. The odds of that happening are the same as yours truly refusing a plate of curly fries (mmmmm) 12 times in a row. Could happen, but not really.

3. Chairs are never kept within the ring when the fight is on. When they are, they are always upright. No exceptions. The sideways chair is purely an insane "let's-hope-nobody-notices" device for Hilary Swank to break her neck.

4. Speaking of which, does anyone know if it's even possible to get such a major spinal injury from falling neck-first into a flimsy plastic chair?

5. Shouldn't heart-rate monitors and such start raising heaven and earth if a patient dies? But no, chance complies neatly with Eastwood to allow him to make a clean getaway after his deed is done. So the nurse on duty went to get coffee. What about the person she told she was going to get coffee? Wouldn't this person have noticed something?

6. Swank has to have a leg lopped off because of gangrene caused by bedsores. Isn't that criminally bad patient care in what is supposed to be a first rate facility?

7. Eastwood allegedly "helps" Swank because she can't do it herself. Eh? We can assume, just from seeing the cars on the street in the movie, that this is post-1990. All Swank has to do to die is to ask. No kidding. Court rulings in the 90s say that a person who uses a vent can request the vent be shut off, and the staff will give them a sedative and shut the vent off just as they start to lose consciousness. It's that simple. It's already all legal. We've seen it play out too many times already in real life. So what's this "Frankie helps Maggie die" about? Why is it part of the script?

The movie makes a deeply satisfying experience out of a murder/suicide. I hate to say this, but Jack Kevorkian would be happy.