Movie Reviews (VI): "Cinderella Man"

KNOWING WHAT YOU’RE FIGHTING FOR
Cinderella Man

Directed by Ron Howard
Written by Cliff Hollingsworth and Akiva Goldsman
Starring Russell Crowe, Renée Zellweger, Paul Giamatti, Craig Bierko, Darrin Brown, Paddy Considine
Three Stars
Rating: PG 13
Running Time: 144 minutes

REVIEWED BY DAVID LAVERY

A down-on-his-luck boxer whose career has hit a dead-end. A wife who cannot bear to watch him in the ring. An out-of-the-blue chance to contend for the heavyweight championship against a seemingly unbeatable foe. Stop me if you’ve heard this one . . . But we’re not in Philadelphia anymore, and Sylvester Stallone is nowhere to be seen. It’s New York during the Great Depression. A once-promising light heavyweight named James J. Braddock (Crowe) struggles to provide for his brave, boxing-averse wife (Zellweger) and plucky children after his days as a boxer have seemingly ended. Then opportunity knocks, thanks to his colorful manager (Giametti), and Braddock finds himself on the path to a showdown with the glamorous and womanizing Max Baer (Bierko), who has killed two opponents in the ring.

Cinderella Man (the title comes from Damon Runyon’s name for the real boxer who became as much of an American working-class sports hero as his race track contemporary Seabiscuit) is full-to-overflowing with underdog clichés and one-dimensional minor characters and often heavy-handed (that juxtaposition of a Catholic church full of downtrodden listeners to Braddock’s big fight on the radio with a solemn Madison Square Garden crowd awaiting their messiah’s entrance into the ring). The performances of Crowe, Zellweger, and Giametti are nevertheless superb, Salvatore Totino’s cinematography is as gritty and realistic as an Ashcan School painting, Thomas Newman’s likely-Oscar nominee score is rich and evocative, and Ron Howard’s direction is surprisingly crisp and fluid for a two hour and twenty four minute film.

Next to the baseball diamond, the ring has proved to be the sports venue most conducive to the movies. Last year’s big Oscar winner, after all, took us behind the scenes of the sweet science. But the best boxing movies, Body and Soul, Requiem for a Heavy Weight, Rocky, Raging Bull, Million Dollar Baby, have always been more about souls on the ropes as pugilists. Working from a screenplay by Cliff Hollingsworth and his Beautiful Mind collaborator Akiva Goldsman, Howard joins that tradition, offering a stirring (though sometimes a bit cloying) portrait of the boxer as an Horatio Alger hero both in the arena and under his own roof.