Great movie, but...

Rating: 9/10 (27 June 2006)

This was a great movie - the story of Braddock's struggles to support his family and his comeback from losing them to the Great Depression is paralleled by his fortunes in the ring. The only negative is the unjustly inaccurate portrayal of Max Baer as an arrogant, sadistic villain. Cruel poverty was villain enough without portraying Baer falsely in this light. Ironically, this is the second film to do this. The first was the 1956 film, "The Harder They Fall," a thinly disguised biopic on Primo Carnera. In that film, a character very obviously based upon Max Baer is also portrayed as an arrogant, sadistic villain, by none other than...Max Baer! Go figure. Other than this, the film is a hit. Russell Crowe is great in a very different part for him and Paul Giamatti shines as the saavy Joe Gould.