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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 23.53%
Worth A Look: 56.62%
Just Average: 2.94%
Pretty Crappy: 15.44%
Sucks: 1.47%
13 reviews, 58 user ratings
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| Cinderella Man |
by Jason Whyte
"'A knock-out!' (That one was for you, Collin)"
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The films of Ron Howard have been hit and miss with me; for every Apollo 13 or Willow that makes us love going to the movies, there’s also The Grinch or The Missing that makes us wish we stayed home. Thankfully, in this day and age, good ‘ol Opie Cunningham still has a few tricks up his sleeve with the release of his solid (if a bit overlong) Cinderella Man, a true story about a New York boxer who is forced out of his passion in the depression era and slowly but surely finds his way again.The film opens in 1928 with Jim Braddock (Russell Crowe) winning a major fight to much acclaim. His loving wife Mae (Renée Zellweger, fresh off her Cold Mountain Oscar) refuses to watch her husband in the ring and instead listens to the fights on the radio. Their life seems to be going nowhere but up, that is until the stock market crash of 1929 and the resulting Dirty 30’s. Braddock and his wife are faced with the struggle of raising three kids when work is limited and money is pretty much non-existent. Jim’s hand also becomes mangled from work which he is forced to hide to keep the food on the table.
Jim gets a job as a Dockworker when he’s lucky (there are usually five hand-picked out of a huge row of people screaming to be chosen) and is struggling to get by when his ex-manager and trainer Joe Gould (Paul Giamatti) offers him $250 to fight with a heavyweight champion. Jim takes the job, surprisingly wins, and he begins to fight again, much to the objection of Mae. Jim gets his passion back and is soon to fight against the title holder, Max Behr (Craig Bierko) despite the fact that Max killed his last opponent.
The fight scenes reminded me of the gritty, hand-held work in Raging Bull and while it may not come close to the realism of Marty Scorsese or what Clint Eastwood showed us in Million Dollar Baby, it comes close. At least Howard isn’t overdoing the fights; using careful editing and camera tricks, we can always tell exactly what is going on. One particular fight sequence is notable for going to another fight by way of a simple “punch” edit to a future fight while still staying in the ring.
Howard also does a good job at bringing us back to the 1930’s depression era. There’s a simple shot of the old shanty town “Hooverville” with New York looming in the background that is quite memorable. What’s even more surprising is that the majority of the film is shot in Toronto (many of the supporting actors, like Davinci’s Inquest’s Nicholas Campbell and Kids in the Hall alum Scott Thompson are from there), and is much less notable than other films that pretend to be a huge city but look far too Canuck-like.In the end, Cinderella Man succeeds the most for the work by Crowe, who is honest, real and a force of nature, and we come to care about him as he fights his way not only in the ring but through his personal struggle with his wife and kids. He is not matched well by Renée Zellweger’s shrill-voiced and mouse-faced Mae, but he has a great chemistry with boss/manager Joe; it may also help that the always-reliable Giamatti gives another one of his great performances as someone who is tested strongly as he helps Jim back into the life of the ring. Fast talking and always winning the argument, one character remarks, “They could put your mouth in the circus!” Yeah, and they could give him an Oscar, too.
link directly to this review at http://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=12400&reviewer=350
originally posted: 06/08/05 13:04:28
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USA
03-Jun-2005 (PG-13)
DVD: 06-Dec-2005
UK
N/A
Australia
29-Sep-2005
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