Search Results

This chapter studies Clint Eastwood's films from the 1990s to the present. White Hunter Black Heart (1990) features the protagonist named John Wilson, whose personality and exploits are unabashedly based on those of filmmaker John Huston. In The Rookie (1990), Eastwood plays Nick Pulovski, a longtime cop trying to solve a string of auto thefts connected with a German mob boss. Unforgiven (1992) was among the first films reflecting Eastwood's maturity as a filmmaker, performer, and explorer of the American frontier myth. His later films include In the Line of Fire (1983), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), Absolute Power (1997), True Crime (1999), Space Cowboys (2000), Mystic River (2003), Million Dollar Baby (2004), Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), Changeling (2008), Gran Torino (2008), Invictus (2009), Hereafter (2010), J. Edgar (2011), and Jersey Boys (2014).

This epilogue considers three boxing films that attracted a large audience in 2005—Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, Million Dollar Baby, and Cinderella Man—and takes stock of the genre at the twenty-first century mark.

This chapter considers a series of films in which Eastwood deals more directly with the complex issues at the heart of moral repair: A Perfect World (1993), Absolute Power (1997), and Million Dollar Baby (2004). Certainly in Absolute Power and Million Dollar Baby the theme of failed fatherhood is grappled with explicitly. Yet what makes these movies so interesting is that the failure here is not portrayed in any simple way as a man's inadequacy before traditional Oedipal complementarity. The Eastwood model is the opposite from the stereotypic good father who knows best; he is a father who is desperate to restore some sort of relationship with his female children by admitting to his failure and apologizing for it. In a sense, these fathers are admitting symbolic castration as part of what it means to be ethical men and, yes, fathers who might even be able to find ways to reconnect with their daughters.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Clint Eastwood's career both as an actor and director. Eastwood became a movie star by playing the role of the Man with No Name in A Fistful of Dollars (1964). Since then, Eastwood has been scrutinized by critics, including Pauline Kael, who famously called him ‘a tall, cold cod’, and Jonathan Rosenbaum, who praised him by calling him ‘one of the finest directors alive’. Only in his later years has Eastwood managed to combine more-or-less edgy material with substantial mass-audience appeal, scoring critically and commercially with Unforgiven (1992), Mystic River (2003), and Million Dollar Baby (2004), which garnered eight Academy Award nominations between them. Even the most appalling box-office failures have contributed to Eastwood's celebrity, consolidating his reputation as a versatile screen artist unafraid of artistic and commercial risks. Measured by longevity, productivity, and profits, Eastwood is the most successful actor-director-producer in American film history.

This chapter examines the issue of autonomous choice as seen in the film Million Dollar Baby (2004). The film tells the story of Maggie (Hilary Swank), a 31-year-old woman who becomes a boxer with the help of her trainer Frankie (Clint Eastwood). Maggie moves successfully into the world of female boxing but later breaks her neck and becomes paralyzed after being hit by an opponent. She tries to kill herself, and when this fails, she asks Frankie to kill her, which he eventually agrees to do. The film aims to show that sometimes death is the best choice, and that individuals should be allowed to make that choice when they want. The chapter argues that Frankie is a hero because he is the only one who respects her choice to die. It then discusses the importance of autonomous choices in medical ethics, both because people typically want to make choices for themselves and because autonomous choices are more likely to be right.