Old-Fashioned Story Strong on Historical Context and the One-Two Punch of Crowe and Giamatti

Rating: 8/10 (12 December 2005)

As he proved with 1995's "Apollo 13", director Ron Howard has an innate capacity of taking a well-known historical event and building suspense around an inevitable outcome. That's because he is adept at developing characters that reach deeper than the facts presented in standard docudramas. This time out, he takes a well-worn leitmotif in movies, the underdog overriding the odds to become a world champion, and puts a plush, sepia-toned design to this Depression-era story about light heavyweight boxer James J. Braddock. The movie is as old-fashioned as Hollywood movies come, but Howard also seems intent on presenting an interesting period of American history that has often been overlooked in recent films.
Starting as a contender in late 1928, he deteriorates into fighting second-rate bouts five years later until he breaks his hand, at which point he is relegated to ad hoc longshoremen jobs on the New Jersey docks. Braddock gets a chance at redemption when his former manager, Joe Gould, offers him $250 to fight a heavyweight contender. He unexpectedly confounds the bookmakers and wins, which eventually leads him to a shot at the title against the heavily-favored opponent, Max Baer. Since the main story structure is rather predictable, Howard, driven by a period-authentic script by Akiva Goldsman and Cliff Hollingsworth, focuses on the atmosphere and the effect of the Depression on families struggling to survive. For example, the details around Madison Square Garden and the "Hooverville" in Central Park feel genuine, and when Braddock hits rock bottom and begs for money from his backers, the scene has an unflinching honesty about how his humiliation has been superseded by his need to get his children back from relatives.
It certainly helps to have Russell Crowe portray Braddock in a committed performance that would make Spencer Tracy proud. While it doesn't rank with his subtly complex work in "The Insider" or "A Beautiful Mind", his heroic performance is top-notch for this type of venture. The film's other sturdy performance comes from Paul Giamatti, who gives Joe a humanistic spirit that provides Braddock his path toward victory. I wish I could say the same for Renée Zellweger, who plays the June Allyson role of Braddock's wife Mae, with squinty-eyed worry and stiff upper-lip devotion, spouting the script's most sentimental lines ("You are the champion of my heart, James J. Braddock!"). It just seems like a sophomoric role for such a proved actress. Smaller roles are filled out expertly, in particular, Paddy Considine as a Communist colleague who wants to force anarchy to make the government respond to the starving masses; Bruce McGill as the mercenary promoter; and Craig Bierko - who seems to be finally graduating from his golden-boy TV-movie roles - as the boastful, menacing Baer (probably an unfair portrait but one that works within this narrative).
It's intriguing that for all the old-fashioned drama developed toward the final bout, that the more penetrating insight in the movie comes from how the period of FDR's New Deal really did not provide a timely response to the people who faced the degradation of poverty and starvation. Braddock is shown as a symbol for the downtrodden which the administration could not fathom in resuscitating hope for people. The DVD contains an insightful audio commentary track with Howard accompanied by screenwriters Goldman and Hollingsworth, as well as deleted scenes and several featurettes about the production. The most interesting addition though is about the subject himself, "Jim Braddock: The Friends & Family Behind The Legend".