Starring: Hilary Swank, Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman (I)

Million Dollar Baby is a very good movie, but is it a religious movie? And if it is, is it kind of anti-Catholic?

It's obviously a movie about boxing as a metaphor for life, which seems appropriate for an old pugilist such as Clint Eastwood. The director and star of this film, Eastwood, like a good carpenter, has fit everything together tightly. There are few seams.

Eastwood plays Frankie, the owner of the Hit Pit, a run-down gym in Los Angeles. Frankie's just lost his boxing champion, Big Willie Little (Mike Colter), because he's overcautious with his fighters. He's back to watching the Hit Pit attract the dregs of society including the addled Danger Barch (Jay Burachel), who still thinks Tommy Hearns is boxing somewhere. Frankie's also back to attending church.

Frankie's last great bout is with God himself. He attends Mass every day. He spars with the father of his Catholic Church, asking the theological questions that continue to plague those of faith (the nature of a triune God, the virgin birth), vexing the young man with the collar to the point of cursing. Yet Frankie attends. Frankie comes back.

Frankie's only companion at the Hit Pit is the wise Eddie "Scrap-Iron" Dupree—known mostly as "Scrap" (the almost saintly Morgan Freeman). Scrap lost an eye in his last fight. Into their lives comes Maggie (Hilary Swank), a tough, determined young woman who wants to be a professional boxer. Frankie tells her she's too old but Maggie is absolutely insistent. Her dogged pursuit of her goal, Scrap's gentle prodding, and Frankie's eventual tutelage, brings her to the attention of the world. At the apex of her career she faces Billie "The Blue Bear," a brutal competitor for the title crown, leading to a scenario that none of them could have imagined.

So why a religious film?

Though there are numerous scenes in church, that's not it. Though there's talk of God and beliefs, that's not it. No, the three leads, a Trinity here, make it a religious film. Frankie is the aloof and omnipotent, omniscient God. Eddie is the healing Holy Spirit, the one who continues to work with mankind as a whole and clean up after them. Maggie is the self-sacrificing, ever-outreaching Christ. She shows up out of nowhere, in her early thirties, with no real past to speak of. Maggie even faces her temptation in the desert as she has to turn down a successful manager, who courts her with dreams of championship bouts and bigger paydays, in favor of continuing her agreement with Frankie. She rejects it, of course.

Extending this line of thinking that would make Frankie's mother, Earline (Margo Martindale), Mary, the mother of God, and she's not given a very glowing review. Mary Magdalen would be Mardel (Riki Lindhome). Neither portrait is remotely complimentary and hence, combined with the henpecked priest, offers a none-to-flattering view of the Catholic Church. But no one, no human, outside of these three, are worthy of notice or remark. Most are like the petty boxer who brutalizes Danger.

And what critics of the third act of this film continually overlook is Danger. Danger is the key to Million Dollar Baby, the boy-man who has no concept of the world around him and may even be mentally retarded in some fashion. We're Danger. And we keep coming back, attempting to earn respect and regain our dignity, even though we're completely at a loss as to how to go about it.

SPOILER ALERT: PROCEDE NO FURTHER IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE:

I have a theory I've received a lot of guff for. I believe Eastwood means to imply that Billie, the Blue Bear, is really a man.

Frankie figures out that she's a he and that's why he instructs Maggie to hit him in the bottom of his ass. It's where he's strapped up his frank and beans. I've had people hoot when I tell them this. I've heard, "No, it's her sciatica; that's why Frankie wants her to hit 'her' there."

I don't think this washes. Frankie's too noble to tell Maggie to win by exploiting something like an opponent's sciatica. He's telling her to hit "her" below the belt.

My theory causes major problems in credibility for the movie. It means that this top-notch fighter went unnoticed as a man, but it also lends credibility to "his" need to knock Maggie with the cheap shot; he can't beat her at this point if she knows how to really hurt him.

Million Dollar Baby has received a lot of flak too, for its final act, when Maggie's neck is broken. The paralyzed fighter asks Frankie to kill her, which he reluctantly does.

Spinal Chord Injury (SCI) groups have decried this as an attempt to say that living with SCI is not worth living at all. The movie they wanted to see was one where Maggie sought out counseling and discovered that there was life after such a catastrophic injury. One can only imagine the region of pain, isolation and despair that these people have come from and it's understandable, though I believe unfair to the film.

Conservative pundits, such as Michael Medved on his nationally broadcast radio show have warned people off of the movie because "it's a right-to-die movie" as he summed up in his pre-review of the film before it had even been screened for most critics. (Actually this served to be an anti-spoiler for me. I went through most of the movie assuming that Frankie was the one who was going to request to be euthanized. In fact, there was a scene at the beginning, where Frankie is praying and says, "You know what I want" that was, for me a clincher.)

But Eastwood's not made a "right-to-die" movie. He's made a movie about a person who is so committed to something--boxing--that her inability to do it at the height of her expertise made life not worth living for her. To Maggie, her life before was not worth living either. The only thing that made it bearable was the hope of being able to be a champion, to box.

This is a right to life movie.