Cinderella Man

Russell Crowe and Ron Howard, the star/director team that struck both critic's lists and multiple Oscar gold with A Beautiful Mind, have joined forces once again. This time, instead of Crowe portraying the real-life story of brilliant 50s-era mathematician John Nash, he portrays the real-life story of brilliant Depression-era boxer Jim Braddock. And this time, instead of a great film, they have produced a competent but frustratingly mediocre effort.

The film follows Braddock as a once-great New Jersey boxer whose career fades among injuries and economic hard times. He, his wife Mae (Renee Zellweger), and their three kids barely endure the Great Depression as the downtrodden boxer struggles to make a scant living on the docks. Jim's manager (Paul Giamatti) arranges to get Jim one comeback fight, and of course the underdog Jim surprises the boxing world--and himself--by winning. Mae is torn between needing Jim to put food on the table and fearing for both her husband's career and his life. From there on, audiences will know exactly where the film is going: overcoming hardship, the requisite fight training montage full of rousing music and flurries of punches, and so on. There's also a strange and squandered subplot of Jim's friend and co-worker Mike, a fesity drunkard who decides he's going to foment political revolution to improve their economic conditions but ends up dead. His main role seems to be as a foil for Jim, to show audiences the economic conditions all are locked in and show Mae that Jim's life could be lost at any time. In the film Seabiscuit, the horse served as a stand-in for America's hopes and dreams; at a time when they were down, the underdog horse made Americans believe in themselves again. Jim (at least according to this film) was the Depression-era Seabiscuit: a hardworking Everyman who got a second chance at life and showed Americans that dreams could come true.

Russell Crowe has proven himself to be one of the best and most versatile actors today, in films as diverse as The Insider and Gladiator. He is good as Jim Braddock, though I can think of a dozen actors who could have done just as well. Renee Zellweger, on the other hand, should be embarrassed at her performance in Cinderella Man. Her squinting, doughy face is only able to register about two distinct emotions (pride and concern), and her performance as Mae is so muted she's barely there. Perhaps Zellweger was trying to overcompensate (fearing too much melodrama in the rest of the film), but at any rate she gives little to a character in desperate need of color and distinction. Canadian actor Nicholas Campbell (star of one of North America's finest TV dramas, CBC's Da Vinci's Inquest) appears in a small but lively role as Sporty Lewis, a sportswriter who dubs Braddock the "Cinderella Man" and helps rouse the common man to Jim's side.

Director Ron Howard was obviously trying for a simplistic, fable-like narrative, but it didn't completely work for me. Jim, Mae, his kids--hell, nearly everyone in the film--is so saintly, so earnest, that they come off as sappy, greeting-card caricatures. When Jim's son steals from a local butcher, he sets the boy straight about right and wrong. When Jim's kids are still hungry after dinner, Jim passes them his uneaten food, telling them he's full. When Jim wins a fight purse, his first gift is a bunch of roses for Mae, and he later repays the public assistance dole they received. Jim sacrifices everything for his three kids, and we feel for him. A scene where he is forced to return to his old friends at Madison Square Garden and ask for money to pay the electric bill is devastating. I wasn't hoping for scenes where Jim spars with the blind or drowns kittens, but I was hoping for a more rounded portrayal that expanded beyond simply self-sacrifice and overcoming odds. One doesn't need to be cold-hearted to have a limited capacity to endure only so many images of Jim's three cherubic children (lit from above, of course), worried about their father, suffering in silence, or minding their mother. The film's earnest tone is so prevasive that nearly everyone seems to have a light halo around them. The only real villain in the picture is the Great Depression itself; even Jim's dreaded nemesis Max Baer (who delivered two opponents from the ring to the cemetary) seems genuinely concerned about hurting Jim, and urges him not to take the showdown fight.

Cinderella Man is already being heralded as one of the best films of the year, though this will stand up only if the rest of the year's crop include performances by Pauly Shore or Adam Sandler. I don't mean to give the impression that Cinderella Man is an inept or bad film; it is not. It's just fiercely pedestrian in almost every respect, and a disappointment given the assembled talent pool.