Perfect Picture Packs Potent Punch

Rating: 10/10 (28 March 2006)

First, kudos to the casting of 'Cinderella Man' - visually and vocally every actor in this movie looks and sounds like the Depression survivors I knew when I was a kid in the 50's. This wasn't Russell Crowe's or Renée Zellweger's, Paul Giamatti's or Craig Bierko's movie: it's a magnificent achievement made magnificent and unforgettable by every actor in it.
Second, this is by far Ron Howard's best film; and in every respect it's cinematically perfect. Only God knows why at Oscar time the Hate America First left-liberals in the AMPAS looked away from this unsurpassably splendid work of art.
Third, there are only two boxing films that show ring blows as they look and sound - and must feel - like in the flesh: the uplifting 'Cinderella Man' and the depressing 'Raging Bull' - and both films succeed brilliantly at communicating what they set out to do and to tell - only the individual viewer can choose which film best imparts the same lessons about what it means, and about how best to be, human. My father took me once to a boxing night and, though before that night I'd seen boxing on television, up close to it I was sickened by the vicious, unremitting violence of the contests; having seen those fights up close I'm fully aware that 'Cinderella Man' pulls no punches in depicting, in making the viewer feel, the harrowing, punishing violence that two men wallop into one another in the ring. Yet I have to observe that boxing was and is still with us, and thus a subject worthy of 'Cinderella Man's' awesome cinematic treatment of it. With every blow missed in 'Cinderella Man' I ducked, and with every blow that connected I flinched, cringed - and I wept that two men could, and would, pummel each other with such singleminded ferocity. But here, in and out of the Depression ring, that's the point for Jim Braddock, the point the audience cannot mistake: a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do for them that he loves, and a woman's gotta do what woman's gotta do for the man she loves.
I can't sufficiently praise 'Cinderella Man' except to say that it proved to me that Ron Howard can, and did, make a movie like they used to: straight from the shoulder; gutsy; powerful; adult; and with all the grit and grace, sophistication and splendor of films from Hollywood's Golden Age. I feel that Howard and his entire team may have even raised the bar above the Golden Greats and in doing so, their achievement perfectly reflects Braddock's achievement in the ring and in life.