|
Cinderella Man May 29, 2005 |
||
|
I wonder if it’s fair to judge a boxing movie by the noise level in the audience at the preview screening. Let’s take “Cinderella Man” as a good test piece- at the screening I was happy to attend, the half-full audience seemed generally pleased with the picture, even clapping their hands at the end, which is rare in mainstream audience situations. But some people, particularly one rowdy nutball in the back row, was cheering every time the film’s protagonist, depression-era boxer Jim Braddock, landed a good punch, took a hard right, or felled an opponent with a strong left. Why somebody didn’t kick this kook out of the theater is beyond me- maybe he was a studio paid plant, placed in the back to elicit a similar response from the non-crazy audience participants- but I digress back to the original question, is a boxing movie, or for that matter, any highly charged sports movie, a winner simply because it’s target audience rises up to its adrenaline-pumped challenge, and makes a few hoots, hollers, and hand claps? Studio execs would say yes, especially if those cheering tell their friends to drop off their money at the box office as well, starting a chain of events leading to a big pay day, but us more critical minded film fans have to tune out the jabbering jerk in the galleries and focus on deeper issues, like the film’s characterizations, atmosphere, dialogue, performances, dramatic weight, and overall cohesion. Sometimes a sports movie has it all (“Raging Bull”, “Million Dollar Baby”, “Friday Night Lights”), and sometimes it only had the adrenaline (“Any Given Sunday”, “The Longest Yard”, “Days of Thunder”), and sometimes, thankfully, like the case of Ron Howard’s new prestige picture, it runs the gamut between perfection and overkill, and what we get is a boxing movie with both humanist and melodramatic elements; and it all works well. Like “Seabiscuit”, “Cinderella Man” is pure sports Americana; a once-famous legendary story almost lost to the ages, before reintroduction by way of a well-written non-fiction novel. Where Seabiscuit captured the nation’s attention during the Great Depression, and brought a glimmer of happiness to a struggling people, “Cinderella Man’s” protagonist, Jim Braddock (Russell Crowe) was of these people, washed up by 1933 with a bum wrist, a day-at-a-time job at the docks (think Brando in “On the Waterfront”), and barely enough scratch to pay the heating bill to keep his adorable wife and small children warm. Just a few years earlier Braddock was a God in the ring, an Irish bulldog, pulling down big purses at Madison Square Garden, back in the days when boxing meant something to men in hats with three-quarters of a cigar hanging out their mouths as cynical beat writers punched their keyboards at ringside and flashbulbs popped in a dizzying array of spectacle and glamour. But the human body is breakable (“It’s as if 80 tough fights have finally jumped on Braddock’s back,” says an announcer), and so is his spirit, especially around late 1929, when out of nowhere a stock market plunge sends the country into its worst ever unemployment crisis, and an aging boxer with a brittle wrist can barely swing a laborers pick, let alone contend for a title. The troubles pile up for Jim Braddock: his kid is stealing meat, his boxing license has been revoked due to poor performance, his wife is threatening to move the kids to her father’s heated apartment in the suburbs, and to finally pay the heating bill, in a scene both terribly sad and over-the-top, he is reduced to begging for dimes in the smoking room of the Garden, the sight of many past glories, and one lowly defeat. At this point in the game, the film has carefully set about its agenda, to paint a portrait of an era through the figure of a broken champion. America was once strong, and in times of crisis, it’ll be strong again. “I didn’t always lose,” he says to his trainer Joe Gould (Paul Giamatti, unquestionably terrific as usual), “and I won’t always lose again.” And at that, the stakes change, and like that little horse nobody thought could run a lick, let alone capture millions with lightening quick speed and a proletarian personality, Braddock is offered a second chance, and he runs with it, all the way to a famous bout against heavyweight madman Max Baer (Craig Bierko), in the name off all of those on bread lines, work lines, and federal assistant lines. Yes, the spirit of the nation will be strong again, and if it takes a horse and a boxer to do it, rather than a President, than so be it; in times of crisis, who has the privilege to be choosy. Ron Howard’s film is brimming with exciting boxing scenes, of which the immediacy and importance of the Baer fight is rightfully drawn out to a glorious climax, with Salvatore Totino’s camera sweeping around the ring like a pugilistic image stealer, but I think the film succeeds more on the dramatic and political scale than simply on the boxing scale. The fights are all great, but Crowe, as is his wont, milks his likeable persona for dramatic gold when he’s down and out, visiting the “Hooverville” in Central Park, where a friend (played by “In America’s” Paddy Considine) is throwing around Communist epithets against the government, or when he stands up for his wife’s honor (played by the always reliable Renee Zellweger) after the brutish Baer insults her at a dinner party. Crowe and Howard used liberal storytelling freedom and melodrama to spin the biography of John Nash into a tortured hero in the Oscar-winning “A Beautiful Mind”, and for my money, they do it even better with Jim Braddock, in a film that isn’t afraid to lay it’s agenda (and emotions) on the line, in between a handful of dazzling fight scenes. “Cinderella Man” may cloy at our sentimental heartstrings, but Crowe’s strong performance, and Howard’s nice ‘30’s set recreation is more than enough to overcome the schmaltzier aspects to the story. Just ask that loon in the back row, he’ll tell you what’s what. “Cinderella Man” is playing at the Movie-Plex 59.
by Adam Suraf
|