ABSTRACT
The Ed Buscombe remarks in his review of Million Dollar Baby, it resembles most movies that feature boxing in that fighting is not its principal subject, but a metaphor for life. At various times the main protagonists in Million Dollar Baby show most of the virtues and vices just listed. These moral qualities provide, so to speak, the basic topography against which Million Dollar Baby is plotted. Sure enough, the half-blind Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris is the only man who can foresee the future in Million Dollar Baby, the only man who is not walking backwards into his fate. Unfortunately British and North American social conventions have shaped the culture so evident in Million Dollar Baby where grief is legitimated only by death. Certainly, Million Dollar Baby can be seen as an homage to Huston's Fat City, an equally keen evocation of the sport as a seedy business.
