FAQ

Yes.

More than anything in life, Mary Margaret "Maggie" Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), a 31-year-old waitress from a poor, dysfunctional family in Missouri, wants to be a boxer. With no training and little money but a lot of determination, she hits upon aging trainer Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) to show her the ropes. At first, Frankie is unwilling ("I don't train girls"), but Maggie persists until Frankie agrees to show her a few tips and finally consents to be her trainer. In doing so, Frankie (who has been estranged from his own daughter) and Maggie (whose father died when she was young) begin to fill voids in each others' lives. Aided by his best friend, one-eyed ex-boxer Eddie "Scrap-iron" Dupris (Morgan Freeman) (who also narrates the story), Frankie lifts Maggie from a scrapper to where she is ready to take on the World Boxing Association (WBA) women's welterweight champion, Billie "The Blue Bear" (Lucia Rijker), an East German with a reputation as a dirty fighter.

Million Dollar Baby is based on various short stories entitled, Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner written by F.X. Toole, the pen name of boxing trainer Jerry Boyd [1930-2002]. The screenplay was written by Paul Haggis. Million Dollar Baby won the 2004 Academy Award for Best Motion Picture.

Near the end of the movie, Frankie finally tells Maggie that Mo chúisle (pronounced "mo cush-lah") translates from the Irish Gaelic as "My darling, my blood." It's a term of endearment and literally means "my pulse".

Maggie begins to develop bed sores on her arms and legs. When the doctors amputate one of her legs, she asks Frankie to do for her what her daddy did for her dog Axel. Frankie refuses, so she bites off her own tongue and nearly bleeds to death before the doctors can get it sewed up. After speaking with Father Jorvak, with Scrap, and with his own conscience, Frankie sneaks into the hospital late at night, unhitches Maggie's respirator, and euthanizes her with a large injection of adrenalin into her IV.

It is then revealed that the story, which has been narrated by Scrap since the beginning, is actually a letter to Frankie's daughter. He ends the letter with the following:

I went back to the gym and waited, figuring he'd turn up sooner or later (shots of Scrap sitting alone at the gym) and that's when a ghost came through the door (shot of Danger returning to the gym). Frankie never came back at all. Frankie didn't leave a note and nobody knew where he went. I'd hope he'd gone to find you and ask you one more time to forgive him, but maybe he didn't have anything left in his heart. I just hope he went someplace where he could find a little peace, a place set in the cedars and oak trees, somewhere between nowhere and goodbye (shot of Ida's Diner), but that's probably wishful thinking. No matter where he is, I thought you should know what kind of man your father really was.

In the final scene, the camera pans through the window of Ida's diner, showing Frankie seated at the counter, possibly eating a piece of homemade lemon meringue pie.