Jami Bernard
Gary Dretzka
Leonard Klady
David Poland
Doug Pratt
Ray Pride
Stu VanAirsdale

Cinderella
Man
Directed by Ron Howard
Universal Pictures

There's a rather delightful irony in the fact that the sobriquet Cinderella Man is more famous than the man it was first pinned upon by sportswriter and phenomenologist Damon Runyon. James Braddock's boxing career had pretty much run dry when he stepped into the ring against second ranked heavyweight contender Corn Griffin in 1934. He wasn't expected to last more than a couple of rounds but Braddock went the distance and won the bout and that one shot return turned into a string of surprise defeats that a year later earned him the fairy tale moniker and a shot at the championship against Max Baer.

Cinderella Man, the movie, chronicles those heady couple of years in Braddock's life and it is the stuff movies are made of. It's a true Rockeyesque saga of pulling oneself up from the bottom and going the distance. Yet it doesn't feel like a fairy tale nor does it slavishly play on sentimentality, nostalgia or movie hokum. It's a movie for adults that sticks pretty much to the facts and lets the honesty, integrity and discipline of its characters come forward in a thoughtfully entertaining fashion.

The film opens during good times for Jim Braddock (Russell Crowe), his wife Mae (Renee Zellweger) and their three children. It's 1928, he's on a winning streak and he's tucked his money into the stock market and several businesses. Five years later, the Wall Street crash has wiped him out, he's never quite recovered from a crushing loss in the ring, the family's living in a shack, he's working on the docks and getting the odd fight for $50 a pop.

However, fighting with an injured hand one evening results in his losing his boxing license to his dismay and his wife's relief. It's a striking reversal of fortune that's both difficult to appreciate and simultaneously wholly comprehensible giving our knowledge of the Depression through film, books and the memories of fathers and grandfathers.

The handling of the riches to rags transition sets the tone of the film and quickly establishes the dramatic depths of the piece. While ostensibly a boxing opus, the heart of the film is the relationship between Jim and Mae Braddock and especially Zellweger's heartfelt performance of a woman unable to watch her husband work yet understanding of his ability and need to fend for his family.

The film shies away from presenting the time and the situation as crushing or squalid. The juxtaposition of where they live, the throngs of men on the docks hoping to earn a quarter for a days work and their eldest son's fear of being sent away to live with relatives gets the point across forcefully.

Both the real life and screen Braddock are ordinary and simple men. They believe in the sanctity of home and family and persevere to keep it all costs without breaking the law or the loss of such old fashioned values as dignity and integrity. He's a character without a fatal flaw and that never particularly bodes well for compelling drama. The fighter only emerges when he's forced to beg a favor for the greater good of keeping his family intact.

Were it not factual, the dramatic turning point of Cinderella Man would seem arbitrary and convenient. One sunny afternoon his manager Joe Gould (Paul Giamatti) arrives with the news that he's secured a fight for Braddock against Griffin. The boxing commission has agreed to reinstate his license because the contender's opponent was felled by an injury and no ranking fighter was willing to step into the ring on such short notice. Everyone including Braddock recognizes it as his swan song but for a $250 windfall that bitter pill doesn't seem distasteful to swallow.

Howard orchestrates that fight and the three to follow effectively. Braddock was a solid instinctual fighter with considerable stamina to take pounding blows somewhat like George Chuvalo who never went down - even when out classed by the likes of Ali. He could also give as good as he got and his unfussy style gave opponents, especially Baer, a false sense of his capabilities.

The movie is equally deceptive. Cliff Hollingsworth's story and screenplay with Akiva Goldsman is a solid blow-by-blow account that gets to the final bout through hard work, few short cuts and a minimum of dramatic invention. There no compulsion to pump up the drama and the methodical, articulate approach seems almost archaic by contemporary filmmaking standards. It forces one to consider whether praise is being doled out too liberally simply because the filmmakers and performers have done their homework well and delivered a film of great skill and emotional impact.

There is a considerable amount to applaud in Cinderella Man and it's not simply a matter of getting things right. It's also a soulful movie and in its own quite way an unlikely champion in an arena dominated by remakes, sequels and franchises.

- Leonard Klady