Down but not out...

Rating: 10/10 (21 July 2014)

Braddock's remains one of the most inspiring boxing stories ever- and Ron Howard's version of it just may be the finest cinematic treatment of the subject we've had so far. Crowe is outstanding, as are Zellweger and Giamatti; but it's Howard, the director, who deserves praise in the highest. I made a point of seeing this one on the big screen, but it took me a while to get around to commenting on it (in great part because watching it causes in me a welling in the throat and a mistiness in the eyes). Cinderella MAN, despite what some may have taken to be melodramatics, happens to be a genuinely dramatic Real Life Story with few equals. ROCKY? Forget it. Compared to Cinderella MAN, ROCKY (and all its sequels) are tantamount to some of the cornier GODZILLA movies, with Rocco battling one giant monster after another. (Yes, I realize that Stallone was simply taking a page from Real Life when he wrote a script based on Chuck Wepner's fight with Muhammad Ali, but he subsequently turned it all into one big comic book series.) One of the more interesting aspects of Cinderella MAN was the depiction of Max Baer. The fact that Baer DID, in fact, kill a man in the ring made him a fighter to be reckoned with (although the beating began with a rabbit punch- a blow to the back of his opponent's head) and the filmmaker's milk that notoriety for all it's worth. As a screen villain, "Max Baer" is akin to the likes of Real Life full contact Middleweight Karate Champion Bill "Superfoot" Wallace in A FORCE OF ONE: he comes across as a man fully capable of KILLING someone in the ring. In The Real World, Baer was "The Clown Prince of Boxing," and he often smiled or laughed aloud or even TAUNTED his opponents. In his dismantling of Primo Carnera (a former circus strongman who'd ALSO killed a man in the ring), he was at his belligerent best- but it took him longer than one might've imagined to do away with Carnera: he seemed to tire midway through the fight- but the reprieve was short-lived and the hapless Carnera eventually succumbed. Against Braddock, Baer never seemed to be able to get untracked. He often stiff-armed Braddock with his left to try to measure him for a right, but Braddock invariably derailed him by popping him in the mouth with a solid left jab. It's hard to tell from the fight films I've watched, but it LOOKS like Braddock bloodies Baer's mouth with that jab. Baer grinned once or twice when Braddock jabbed him in the mouth, but it quickly became clear that he didn't find it all that funny. He tried desperately to end it in the fifteenth and final round, but the thing that surprised me most was the fact that Braddock stood his ground and traded punches with Baer until the final bell. He had handily outboxed Baer. It remains to this day an inspirational Real Life success story. (And it didn't end with THIS fight: before he put the title on the line against Joe Louis, Braddock had a stipulation put into their contract that, should Louis win (he did), Braddock would get a percentage of his subsequent title defenses. Which he did.)