Originally published 6/5/05
Cinderella Man
Director: Ron Howard
Writers: Story by Cliff Hollingsworth, Screenplay by Cliff Hollingsworth and Akiva Goldsman
Producers: Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Penny Marshall
Stars: Russell Crowe, Renée Zellweger, Paul Giamatti, Craig Bierko, Paddy Considine, Bruce McGill
When Ron Howard goes for overt style we can get an abomination like his version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. And when he goes for critical love we can get puffed-up frauds like A Beautiful Mind. The more restrained he is the better the movie ends up – Apollo 13 being the most prominent example of the merits of a no-nonsense classicist’s approach and his best film. He is an able craftsman, at his best when serving a story rather than trying to bark its virtues at us.
And for a great deal of Cinderella Man, this is the treatment with which we are blessed. Howard is respectful and cautious of sensation in dramatizing the unlikely story of Jim Braddock (Russell Crowe), a washed-up boxer who, during The Great Depression, made a captivating second run at glory in order to feed his family. While he does take full note of the way Braddock’s struggle against age, injury and destitution inspired many around the country, he does not sink into that Seabiscuit trap of mythologizing the hero to the extent that he seems to conquer the whole Depression by his lonesome.
Back in the Roaring 20’s Braddock is a rising contender with an underwhelming left but a devil of a right, and he and his longtime corner man Joe Gould (Paul Giamatti) can take home thousands from a successful bout. Braddock and his wife Mae (Renée Zellweger) have a respectable house for their three children, and more comfort than two New Jersey kids might ever have hoped for. But in seemingly the blink of an eye – or more accurately, in the course of one effective time-lapse pan – their wealth is wiped out, they are living in a single crowded room four months behind on the bills, and Jim has broken his hand again and lost his boxing license while trying to earn $50.
It concisely personifies the effect the Depression had on so many – a single crushing blow that changed their lives irrevocably. Though our focus is on the Braddocks we have the opportunity to glimpse how others dealt with the crisis – Mae pleads with a power company man not to cut off her electricity, and we can see the shame on his face but also the fear – if he doesn’t do it he loses his job, and two of his colleagues have been let go this week already.
Howard casts the picture very well and the frame is filled with hardened, weathered faces trying to preserve some light in their eyes. Braddock wants to believe he can work his way out of this hole without having to send the kids away to well-off relatives, but getting picked for a shift at the docks is rare enough, and he has to cover the cast on his hand with shoe polish, hope no one notices, and do as much work as he can with his left arm.
What compels us is how we first see his pride, then we see how selflessly and unquestioningly he will swallow that pride for the sake of his children – applying for federal assistance and even begging (in tears) the members of the boxing commission for a handout. We are seeing a man who would break himself open if he thought it would help keep his family together and fed. Boxing is the right sport for him.
And it’s at that moment, by twist of fate, a last-minute replacement is needed for an undercard fight at Madison Square Garden. Braddock isn’t supposed to last two rounds, but his left arm has been tempered by the dock work and is now a dangerous weapon. He begins a second career and, as he says in a press conference, it’s easy to be motivated when you are fighting for milk. Soon he is being talked of as a contender for the heavyweight crown held by Max Baer (Craig Bierko) – who is described as having killed two men during matches* (*this is historically dubious, and Baer’s estate has fiercely protested his depiction in this film). And though this portrayal of Baer behaves as a fearsome showoff and bully, he is genuinely reluctant to face the creaky Braddock, since he is sure that two will inevitably become three.
It’s effective to contrast the business of boxing with Braddock’s straight-ahead decency. The promoter (Bruce McGill) who essentially controls his fate will not be distracted from the goal of putting paying customers in chairs, which is why Braddock needs a hustler like Gould to advocate for him. Paul Giamatti has paid enough membership dues to enter the Character Actor Hall of Fame, and we must simply wonder which role will get him the awards he already earned in American Splendor, Sideways and a host of other films. Here, as Gould, he is the key to our understanding the psychological gamesmanship of boxing both in and out of the ring.
He curses, he entreats, he wheedles, he boasts, he baits, he explodes at referees, all the while encouraging Braddock, spurring him on, striving to make him feel invincible and his opponent vulnernable like a good cornerman must do. It’s an orchestral triumph of calculation disguised as manic extroversion, and Giamatti’s gift to us is his ability to slyly let us in on it while also showing his genuine loyalty and affection for Braddock.
Crowe and Zellweger both demonstrate how they have managed to bridge the world of acting and movie stardom – they are called upon here to be virtuous and larger-than-life yet not appear false and they do so. Crowe, particularly, achieves another one of his transformations-that-never-looks-like-one – compare his darting, searching eyes here to the confident gaze of Maximus, or the wounded and suspicious narrow stare of Detective Bud White. All vastly different, and yet all are roles he has made definitively his own in his rise to fame.
The boxing is competently and excitingly filmed by rising cinematographer Salvatore Totino, which is to Howard’s credit here even as he stands in the long shadows of others (like Scorsese in Raging Bull) who have captured brilliant cinema in the boxing ring. His focus is more on tracking the mood – who is setting the pace, who really believes they are winning, and who is just luring you in for the knockout. Since the emotional premise is that it is Braddock’s near-hopeless circumstances that gave him lethal focus and stamina in the ring, it’s a wise choice.
The screenplay is co-written by Akiva Goldsman, who never met a formula he didn’t like and never found a page of dialogue he couldn’t water down so it served nothing but that formula. A few of his trademark groaners survive, thankfully his influence is not as noticeable here as it was in A Beautiful Mind. Cinderella Man can be effectively described as a movie that steps right at many of the places and moments Mind stepped wrong, largely by trusting the power of the story itself.