Cinderella Man

Directors: Ron Howard
Screenplay: Cliff Hollingsworth and Akiva Goldsman
Stars: Russell Crowe (James J. Braddock), Renée Zellweger (Mae Braddock), Paul Giamatti (Joe Gould), Craig Bierko (Max Baer), Paddy Considine (Mike Wilson), Bruce McGill (Jimmy Johnston), David Huband (Ford Bond), Connor Price (Jay Braddock), Ariel Waller (Rosemarie Braddock), Patrick Louis (Howard Braddock), Rosemarie DeWitt (Sara Wilson), Linda Kash (Lucille Gould), Nicholas Campbell (Sporty Lewis)
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Year of Release: 2005
Country: U.S.
Cinderella Man
Cinderella ManIn Cinderella Man, Ron Howard achieves a surprising balancing act between fairy-tale fantasy and gritty, hard-nosed reality. The film is relentlessly old-fashioned, both morally and aesthetically, but in this case it’s a good thing because it grounds the story so firmly in its time and place (it literally could have been made in the 1930s). The big themes of familial solidarity, perseverance, individual nobility, and the scrappy might of the underdog are all deeply rooted in the primal fantasy of America as a vast melting pot of realized dreams, but Cinderella Man never feels overly contrived or forceful in the way it spins these shiny themes within a world otherwise overshadowed by financial drought.

Much of the film’s grit and emotional strength can be attributed to the towering central performance by Russell Crowe as James J. Braddock, the real-life pugilist hero from New Jersey who came back from oblivion to capture the world heavyweight championship in 1935. As imagined in the screenplay by Cliff Hollingsworth and Akiva Goldsman (who won an Oscar for writing Howard’s last collaboration with Crowe, 2001 A Beautiful Mind), Braddock is an almost unbelievably upright character, and Crowe disappears into that hard-working decency, channeling his signature steely resolve into a portrait of innate struggle. His meaty presence is the film’s center, giving weight and power to a story that has all the danger signs of being overly mawkish and simplistic.

Braddock’s misfortunes -- losing all his money in the stock market crash of 1929, a series of injuries that sideline his boxing career -- are not of his own making, yet he accepts their burden as if they were. There is no moment more affecting than when this proud man, who has done everything imaginable to provide for his family, is finally reduced to asking for handouts from his former associates. Crowe imbues this moment with a sense of poignancy that can only come from a man forced to the end of his rope.

Braddock feels doubly pained because he is trying to look out for his family. His wife, Mae (Renée Zellweger), is a pillar of support and trust, although deep inside she hates that her husband boxes for a living and prays for an injury just severe enough to end his career without ending his life. Their three children seem to have inherited their parents’ nobility, although one of the boys resorts to stealing from a butcher shop, an act of desperation that Braddock treats gently, but firmly.

The economic desperation the Braddocks face on a daily basis constantly threatens to tear them apart, and it forms the fabric of the film’s underbelly; even when the comeback begins, there is always the feeling of that black void just beneath them. (The film has been compared by many to Seabiscuit, but in its depiction of the Depression, Cinderella Man is far and beyond superior because it allows the ashen cinematography and dilapidated mise-en-scene to tell the story, rather than stopping the narrative for dull historical narration.)

Braddock’s manager and trainer, Joe Gould (Paul Giamatti, in yet another fantastic performance), manages to get Braddock a one-shot boxing match, and Braddock is more excited about the pay than any pipe dream of making a comeback. But, lo and behold, Braddock wins the bout, the surprised look on his face matching those of everyone around him. Because of his victory, Gould is able to get Braddock another bout, and then another, and then another, until he has improbably reached the position of being the leading heavyweight contender and finds himself matched against the current champion, a hulking, playboy-good-looking brawler named Max Baer (Craig Bierko) whose right hook is literally lethal, having cost two men their lives already (one of the film’s greatest weaknesses is the way it reduces Baer to a moustache-twirling villain when it really wasn’t necessary). Thus, when Braddock enters the ring for the climactic fight, he is literally taking his life in his hands, and it is testament to the film’s emotional center that it wrings so much suspense out of an event of which most people already know the outcome.

The fight scenes in Cinderella Man pack a wallop, one that is as emotional as it is physical. It is made clear at several points that Braddock is not fighting for glory, but for simple survival (at a press conference, he tells a reporter that he’s fighting for milk), which heightens the stakes far beyond what most sports movies offer (the same could be said, to an even greater degree, of Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby). Howard’s stylistic choices here are a mixed bag, as his fluid, roving camera, often at a low angle to mimic a ringside view or right in the thick of the flying fists, conveys the excitement and brutal violence of the sport, while his decision to throw in unnecessary quick-cut flashbacks and blinding X-ray shots of Braddock’s insides being damaged by a gloved fist detract from the moment by drawing too much attention to themselves. Do we really need multiple flashbacks of Baer’s previous boxing victim to remind us over and over again that he has the potential to kill Braddock?

Those quibbles aside, Cinderella Man is exactly what it sets out to be: a rousing fable about a decent, goodhearted man achieving great heights. It is testament to the film’s good will and old-fashioned values that Braddock’s great heights have little to do with being boxing’s world champion and everything to do with providing for the ones he loves.

Copyright ©2005 James Kendrick

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All images copyright ©2005 Universal Pictures and Miramax Films

Overall Rating: (3)




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