Million Dollar Baby Essay

Jessica Cardenas Torres

Third Semester

This movie was about a boxer who not only showed how good she could be in boxing but also what love, friendship, and chasing your dreams really meant. Her name was Maggie Fitzgerald who saw Frankie that is a trainer and manager for aspiring boxers and immediately knew knew she wanted to be trained by him. She then started to train on his gym but he refused because he said he did not want to work with a girl. After that she worked even harder so her dream could come true, so she stayed at night to train and that is when Scrap, an ex boxer who worked with Frankie which also was his best friend saw that she could become an excellent boxer. Maggie had the approval of Scrap but not of Frankie, but one day decided that he would train her under the condition that after she would get a good manager and she said yes. She worked hard always following her dream of becoming a boxer. She was also a great person to even though her family didn’t treat her right she saved all her money from boxing and bought a house for her horrible mother which she accepted it but wanted more of her money.

Frankie finds a substitute daughter in Maggie. During a car ride, she tells Frankie about her dad's dog who dragged his hind legs around and how she and her sister laughed at the dog. Her dad, ill and with little time left to live, takes the dog out for one final ride, and only Dad comes back.

Frankie practiced being a Catholic. He went to church every day. It's not really clear why he does this, since mostly he asks the priest questions, not looking for answers, just looking to irritate.

Maggie finally gets her shot at the championship. She appears to demolish her opponent, but makes the mistake of turning her back on her when she's down. The other boxer comes up and hits her, knocking Maggie to the floor. Maggie's head hits a bench on the way down, and apparently snaps her neck.

During the course of Maggie's treatment and rehab, she develops pressure sores which are treated as inevitable and unrelated to quality of care. One becomes so bad that her leg has to be amputated.

Frankie manages everything for Maggie. He gets her into a rehab facility,he finds courses for her to take at City College.

Turns out Maggie doesn't want any of it. She doesn't want to live like this, she tells him. All she ever wanted to be was a boxer and she got that. She had fans; she was on the covers of magazines. She doesn't want to get to the point where she can't even remember living her dream any more, so she asks him to do what her dad did to his dog and help her die.

Frankie doesn’t know what to do so he talks to priest and he says that he cant do it but he stills feels like he has to.

At the end Frankie injected her with adrenaline and she died peacefully.

What I thought about this movie was that it had several messages. First of all was Maggie who was always fighting for her dream of being a boxer and even though she had a tough life she never backed down and always kept her mind on what she wanted.

Second was that it is never too late to start achieving your dream. Maggie wasn’t a young strong woman and still she made an effort to stay centered on what she wanted to accomplish and at the end she did.

Another message was that you are not alone and that there will always be someone that loves you as Maggie loves Frankie as a father, eventhough Frankie though he was alone because she didn’t have her daughter with him. Maggie showed him that there was love and friendship and that helped Frankie to see the world in a different kind of way.

The last message I think was that you cant judge a person right away you have to give everyone a chance. Frankie at first didn’t want Maggie and at last she was everything to him.

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