Cinderella Man (2005)

rating: ****

the story: The Great Depression is almost Jim Braddock's greatest opponent.

review: Boxing is such a familiar movie premise at this point it can be easy to take for granted, but there's a reason it's used so much, because it's inherently cinematic.  It's almost better to watch boxing in the movies than any other way.  Cinderella Man, in turn, dramatizes one of the great boxing stories, a comeback tale that dwarfs the later fictional Rocky Balboa saga.

It's also a Russell Crowe vehicle.  It seems as if Hollywood (and/or the press) periodically chews up and spits out its stars, finding whatever pretense it can (there always seems to be one), and this was just about the point where Crowe's remarkable Oscars streak (starring in back-to-back Best Picture winners, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind) had reached its sell-by date, right when he seemed to have found another surefire winner.  But the system was done with him, and that's all you really needed to know about Cinderella Man.  Right?

Crowe has been chasing Brando his whole career, by his own admission.  Before he became a known acting commodity, Crowe was acting singing (yeah! he sang before he acted) "I Just Wanna Be Like Marlon Brando."  Brando's early defining role was washed-up boxer Terry Malloy ("I coulda been a contenda!").  It's not hard to imagine Crowe envisioning himself playing Malloy, after a fashion, and the audience finally getting to see the guy actually box.  And of course, because it's based on a real story, Malloy getting to hold his head high for an entirely different reason, at the end of the movie.

Cinderella Man is in some ways the end of the old Hollywood, before blockbusters finally squeezed out the traditional drama in the popular imagination.  The Oscars, ironically, no longer have time for movies like it, even though their whole stereotype is built on it.  But Cinderella Man isn't just the stereotype.  As I say at the beginning of the review, it's about the boxing itself, how well it translates to film, and about perhaps the greatest boxing story ever.

Crowe's only real support in all this is Paul Giamatti, in a role that catches him at the exact moment he was attempting to finally transition into a leading man, thanks to the one-two punch (pop! pop!) of American Splendor and Sideways that helped studios and audiences finally discover his unique appeal.  His role in Cinderalla Man expands as the movie continues, but it's still clearly a supporting one.  There's also Renee Zellweger, who was in the midst of her own career transition, downward, having once been a Hollywood darling.  Her role shrinks in the movie as it goes along, naturally.  Director Ron Howard, of course, who helmed Crowe previously in A Beautiful Mind, was afterward best known for his Robert Langdon adaptations, and never again, like Crowe, embraced by the Oscar set.

Crowe never did get to make movies like this again.  His subsequent career has been marked with reinvention.  So perhaps different for the better.  Cinderella Man is a neat little swan song for all involved.