Starring: Russell Crowe, Renee Zellweger, Paul Giamatti and Paddy Considine
Director: Ron Howard
Rated: M15+
JIM Braddock (Russell Crowe) is doing it hard.
In depression USA, Jim has no job, a wife and four children to feed, a cold winter to survive and the future to prepare for.
Jim is a boxer, though his career is not going well.
His manager, Joe Gould (Paul Giamatti), arranges a bout, but when Jim is accused of not putting up a decent effort in the ring he is deregistered as a boxer.
Unemployed and with a sick child at home, Jim begs to be re-admitted to the boxing association.
They relent, and he is put up against younger and fitter boxers who are vying for world championships.
He starts winning. His fame spreads and soon he is contracted to fight Max Baer (Craig Bierko) who has killed two of his previous opponents.
Jim has to decide between the money and glory, or his life and the family.
His wife Mae (Renee Zellweger) does not want to be a widow.
The title, Cinderella Man, refers to how, when Jim’s career was thought to be over, one night changed Jim’s life.
Braddock had his night at the ball and lived happily ever after.
This film is based on real events, though the way it treats those events and the people within them, is a source of great debate.
Some of Jim Braddock’s family and friends dispute many of the details contained in this film.
Whatever the veracity of the story, Cinderella Man lurches between being very sentimental and very brutal.
Director Ron Howard canonises Jim Braddock.
Jim does everything for his family. He even repays his welfare payments when he starts to make some money.
Rather than punish his son for stealing food, he makes him return the goods, then finds out why he stole them in the first place.
Jim is the finest husband and father imaginable.
There is no problem in any of this.
But Ron Howard contrasts this gentle nobility with prolonged and detailed boxing scenes.
Be warned, the graphic violence in boxing matches, the use of slow motion to heighten the impact of the blows and the language that accompanies this action will disturb many viewers.
In Cinderella Man we are told that a gentle, sensitive man gets into the ring and bashes every opponent to a pulp without any seeming hesitation or regret. Maybe.
It is this contrast in the film that makes it unbelievable.
The faith of the Braddocks is an interesting feature of this film.
Life is so tough for Jim that he feels distant from God and the Church. “I am all prayed out,” he says.
Mae is a practising Catholic. Jim is a hero to the Irish Catholics of New Jersey.
So much so that on the night of his biggest fight the parish priest places a radio in the sanctuary of the church and hosts the congregation as they pray for Jim and listen to the bout.
It is hard to imagine a priest doing such a thing now, let alone it occurring in 1937.
The parish hall may have been the venue for the radio, but not the church.
There is no question that the real Jim Braddock story is inspiring, but unusually for Ron Howard, who is presently shooting The Da Vinci Code with Tom Hanks, the potential impact of the story gets lost in this overly long (it’s two hours and 14 minutes), syrupy and brutal hagiography.
