Cinderella Man
At a key moment in the big fight that closes “Cinderella Man”- Ron Howard’s bruising and moving boxing drama- when Joe Gould (played with less fiest than we’re used to- but no less sympathy- by the great Paul Giamatti) tells James J. Braddock (Russell Crowe), “Play it safe, and they can’t take it from you.” In retort, I was expecting Braddock to say something along the lines of, “If I risk it all, they have to give it to me.” For a lot of the movie- which dances around with formula underdog conventions like they’re best buds- that’s just the kind of movie “Cinderella Man” was.
But that’s not the kind of movie “Cinderella Man” is in the end, when instead of a spoken cliche and musical swell (by the awfully swell score by Thomas Newman) we get something more satisfying in the form of seeing Braddock go out and earn his boxing title through genuine guts and glory from the brutish Max Behr that allows the filmmakers to earn their happy ending at the film’s end. It’s a far more satisfying way for the movie to go out, and unless you know Braddock’s whole story going in, it’s just one of the emotional surprises Howard has in store for you at that point (I just thought I was watching the story of a boxer, not the makings of a genuine American hero, which we learn was more the case in the epilogue).
As a tale of triumph and perserverence in America’s darkest decade (the Great Depression), “Cinderella Man” is not unlike 2003’s “Seabiscuit” in it’s playing loose with some facts (apparently Behr wasn’t the thick-headed sleaze he is in the movie) while idealizing it’s subjects to get the maximum amount of feel-good from a story that even in its’ purest form would make you feel good anyway. However, neither film backed away from the harsh realities their subjects had to face (Braddock’s struggle to keep his family together when things got rough financially, the Biscuit and Red Pollard’s career-threatening injuries), and that’s what made them ultimately uplifting.
As highly as I still regard “Seabiscuit,” though, “Cinderella Man” is a better, more honest, less nostalgic look back at the hardships of the time, and closer in that honesty to the two best films about the period I’ve seen, Steven Soderbergh’s underseen (and underavailable- when’s it coming out on DVD already?) 1993 film “King of the Hill” and John Ford’s “The Grapes of Wrath.” Howard and his screenwriters (Cliff Hollingsworth and “A Beautiful Mind’s” Akiva Goldsman) aren’t afraid of showing the grim realities of this time for a family like Braddock’s, where Jim is the patriarch struggling to find work (he goes down to the dock’s every day to pick up shifts, but it still isn’t enough to pay the mounting bills), his loving wife Mae (Renee Zellweger, continuing to impress in her versatility and compassion in a supporting role that should merit her talk of another Oscar) is left with hard choices, and their three children (not a ringer in this bunch of unknowns) are stuck in the middle. Where the story goes, I leave for the film to tell you. Where the emotions go, you’ll know when you see it.
Braddock is a great role for an actor, and though it’s a natural hero role a lesser actor could do well enough with, in the skilled hands of an actor like Crowe, Braddock becomes a larger-than-life figure rooted in the grim realities around him. The vulnerability of feeling he showed in “A Beautiful Mind” and “The Insider” is in full bloom during the scenes where Braddock must beg for money from the same boxing commission ilk that revoked his license after an embarrassing fight that many felt showed his time was up, and all of the domestic scenes where he and Mae are hanging on with the bare essentials- and sometimes not even that- trying to keep their family together. At the same time, though, he displays the stoic tenacity and determination that propelled him to stardom in “L.A. Confidential” and “Gladiator” both in Braddock’s approach to the grim realities he faces outside the ring, and the uphill battle he’s climbing in the ring, where he’s sometimes- most times- fighting hurt because there’s no other option for him. Crowe earns the cliched reactions Braddock gets when he finds himself back in the ring, like when one boxer who had beaten him previously says to his ring man, “He isn’t the same fighter.” It’s one of his best performances (if not his best), which is saying something about an actor who was nominated for Oscars for three straight years- 1999’s “The Insider,” 2000’s “Gladiator,” and 2001’s “A Beautiful Mind”- and probably should have been nominated two other times for 1997’s “L.A. Confidential” and 2003’s “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.”
Even when “Cinderella Man” falls into the usual sports movie cliches- which it does do- it remains solid evidence for Ron Howard being one of the most underrated directors around. He wasn’t my first choice (considering the other nominees, he was fourth), but he deserved his Oscar for “Mind,” if only because it showed a daring and inventiveness he’d rarely hinted at before in any of his films. He’s continually showed a versitility in his ability to go from making a comedy to a drama at the drop of a hat, and in his best work in both (“Night Shift” and “Parenthood” are comedy classics, “Ransom” is an underrated pot-boiler, and “Apollo 13’s” his best film period and great true story suspense), it has been his unique ability to find the humor or the drama in his character’s feelings about the obstacles life throws in their way, and he rarely- despite what his detractors say- lets them take the easy way out (2000’s underrated and visionary “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” is another example of this, even if it can’t touch the Chuck Jones original). He lets them make decisions that are harsh, and doesn’t lead them out of it through easy plot mechanics (OK, he sometimes does- “The Paper,” “EdTV,” and “Gung Ho” are examples) but presents the story as it would seem to logically flow. He isn’t averse to formula, which is what makes him an easy target of critics, and “Cinderella Man” is another example of that. But some of the best directors in Hollywood’s history have been more interested in serving popcorn-flavored entertainment than provocative experiments (Steven Spielberg and Alfred Hitchcock are the best examples, but even those masters have thrown artistic ambitions into the mix- and brilliantly- when necessary). Personally, I hope Howard never changes fundamentally as a director. But in retrospect, it’s clear to see that he’s come a long way from the crowd-pleasing director that made the vanilla “Far and Away” to the Oscar-winner that has made one of 2005’s best and most rigerous crowd-pleasers in “Cinderella Man.”
