And a left -- and a right!

Rating: 4/10 (24 June 2006)

I don't think the theme goes farther back than Lysistrata, about 400 BC. Women object to men's afición for combat and try to stop it.
For forerunners of poor families drawn into boxing look for "Body and Soul" and "Rocky". Yet, as a feel-good movie, as most of Ron Howard's are, it works -- in the sense that you feel good at the end. Want to draw two lessons from it? Have a devoted wife (a great performance by Zellwiger) and every dumb Irishman should have a smart Jewish manager. So as not to burden the viewer with the necessity of thought, the script shows us characters that are exclusively one dimensional. Braddock's probity is never in doubt. And Max Baer is thoroughly evil, along the lines of Mr. T in "Rocky III."
No character ever changes or develops in any major way. What you see at first is what you get all the way through, although in those few scenes in which Crowe has to project some emotion, he delivers in the grand manner. The film even preaches that during the Great Depression, communism (or "unionism") was wrong-headed. Braddock's socially engaged working-class pal gets run over by a horse-drawn wagon in a Hooverville. Braddock, who refuses to fight anything that he can't see, like "the economy," emerges victorious. That's the movie's political point of view, although the fact is, as every sensible person know, under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's just the opposite.
There are two good things about it. One is the fight scenes, that resemble paintings by Bellows. The choreography hasn't much new to offer but at least it doesn't repeat shots that have now become clichés. Little in the way of slow motion. On the other hand, Howard is so anxious for the viewer not to overlook even the most obvious points that when Braddock has one or two ribs cracked during a bout, the director actually shows us a brief X-ray of the ribs!
Does it resemble any previous sports movies? How could it not? Put "The Rookie," "Rocky", and one or two others into a Waring blender and this is what you get. An entertaining, even gripping, thoroughly commercial fairy tale. Not that it's bad. It IS after all a feel-good movie.
And the scenes of economic desolation are convincing. When my grandmother died my grandfather, an immigrant, was saddled with three kids, the oldest about 12, while working 12 hours a day including Saturdays. He farmed them out and chipped in as well as he could, just as in this movie. Those who think of those days as a golden age, before taxes and such social programs as LIHEAP, ought to rethink things.
A second interesting point, though, is the stovepipe that sports provide into the wealthy class. It really worked for minorities. First Irish, then Italians and Jews, then blacks, then Latinos. Boxing, barbaric as it is, serves the same economic purpose as the military -- a way out of poverty.