Why Million Dollar Baby now?
Most of the people reading this review may very well have seen this film and enjoyed it and yet I want to share the joy with you and also I want to ask a few questions.
’’Million dollar baby’’ a film directed by the Hollywood legend Mr. Clint Eastwood bagged four Oscar awards including for direction(Clint Eastwood) and for best actress ( Hilary Swank).
The makers of the film WARNER BROS sensed that the film might win Oscars and released the film a bit early completing the whole film in about 40 days.
The film not only won the Oscars but also became a box office hit.
The story:
The story revolves around the boxing career of not a man but a woman. In the story the woman’s age would be 35 and still she chooses boxing career.
Hilary Swank( the lady boxer ) behaves like a daughter to the trainer or coach ( Clint Eastwood). I think no one can act like that except Hillary Swank. She was called Maggie in the film.
The coach has an emotional bonding with his daughter with whom now he has lost contact.
The hotel server turned Boxer ( Hillary Swank) now fills up the emotional gap for Mr. Clint Eastwood, the coach.
She shows singular determination of a boxer and bigins to win boxing bouts or matches much against many others expectations and much powerful and younger people than her. Her advanced age is a real problem because in boxing age would be a great advantage because of greater flexibility. As she begins to win some of the challenging matches , the coach ( Clint Eastwood) calls her as ’’Million dollar baby’’.
The way she behaves would be exactly like a father to a daughter. At age 71 years ( real age) Clint Eastwood fits in the role perfectly well but Hillary Swanks action makes you think that she was real daughter of Clint Eastwood.
The story ends in a big tragedy.
Now the question is
if some one is neither dying nor can live with out pain should we kill them ?
In other words if some one is suffering unbearable pain and developing bed sores and asks you to help kill her , should you kill or not ?
And another big question the director Clint Eastwood is trying to ask the audience is whether we should accept the Boxing as a sport ? Or shall we consider this as mortal combat ?
Euthanasia means killing some one to releave him or her from pain.
This is what happens to Million dollar baby. There was a foul pay. And that was her fate.
How it all happened you can see it in the film but the most painful is that she bites her own tong to kill herself. She was in such a stage that she could not kill herself and requests the coach ( Clint Eastwood) to kill her.
What should Frankie (Clint Eastwood ) do ???
In fact that was the million dollar question.
The support actor , the owner of the gym , where the baby practiced the boxing was a mute witness!
See the movie and write a comment whether ’’benevolent killing ’’ is acceptable or not ?
“Million dollar baby” may turn out to be a trend setter for many Indian films to come.
We have the great habit of copying.
Producers have taken a considerable risk with such an ending but as you can see , the film is a great box office hit all over the world including India.
I saw the film in Prasad Multiplex , Hyderabad , some three months ago. At that time it was I think 30th day and the cinema Hall was packed.