Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby: Hilary Swank in the Hit Pit

Million Dollar Baby find easy cover for its flaws in the inspired acting of Morgan Freeman, Clinton Eastwood and the beguiling Hilary Swank. Audiences are accustomed to Eastwood=s minimalist hard-boiled approach - here he plays Frankie Dunn, boxing trainer,cut man and impresario of the Hit Pit, a gritty fighter's gym in East Los Angeles. Frankie nurses dark wounds buried deep within his psyche, looks to religion in vain for answers, and eventually shuffles off to a limbo of permanent disillusionment. This is not a Rocky lookalike movie. 

Morgan Freeman's character, Scrap, was added to the script for balance and counterpoint. Scrap is not to be found in the short story of the same title by writer and former cut man F. X. Toole, but his stoic wisdom and brooding presence adds philosophical depth to the story and a resonant narrative voice. Scrap is the name of a former contender well past his prime, rather like the one in the Simon & Garfunkel song, The Boxer. "I am leaving...I am leaving...but the fighter still remains".....

The simile is figurative, however. The character portrayed by Morgan Freeman is too old for the ring, but his fighter's heart never abandons him. He never wallows in self-pity, never succumbs to self-doubt, and following the ancient wisdom of boxing, stalks forward behind his jab, probing for the heart of his opponent. Scrap's missed the mark for the title shot long ago and lost an eye besides; now he lives permanently in a sideroom alongside the gym and tries to help Frankie understand and forgive himself. He also helps with the boys. Boys? 

"I don't train girls", Frankie tells Maggie Fitzgerald, when she first begins to pester him to train her. 
"And tough ain't enough!"  one of Frankie's favorite maxims.