Dangerously close to being "just another movie about boxing", but the portrayal of an era saves it and Russell Crowe is great in roles like this

Rating: 7/10 (30 August 2006)

Now I know Russell Crowe may be a jerk in reality, but he clearly knows his stuff on screen so we can move past that. As a buff, bare-chested Gladiator-hero with a big ol' softie heart for his family, we love him in this film. It is set during the depression in the 1930s New York. The fact that he isn't fighting for glory but for for survival immediately makes his struggle much more poignant, and Ron Howard's Cinderella Man (2005) rides on this advantage throughout  this desperate depression time that drives a man to desperate measures.
I think boxing is a truly inhumane sport. It shouldn't even qualify as a sport; it's two people inflicting maximum damage on each other. But Jim Bradock (that's Russell Crowe)'s fighting is something different  this isn't something he does for fun. In the beginning, after having lost a boxing match, a sponsor-person tells him "Go home to your kids, Bradock" to which Braddock replies, "Go home? Go home with what?" He needs to do it and it is apparent in the fighting.
So in spite of my dislike for boxing, I have to credit this film for its dynamic, fast-paced and realistic games that even surpass those of Million Dollar Baby (2004). It's pretty damn exciting. Another plus for this film that elevates it above generic sports-movie formula is its setting. The murky, barren feel of the Depression invests the scenes in a kind of simplicity that is only ever present in Dogme 95. It places the environment in the backseat, with minimal visuals flair to detract, to make room for its realistic characters that consume the film.
Ultimately, The Cinderella Man is a well-crafted and often entertaining film but it is extremely standard, safe, predictable, logical, been-there-done-that  there are no puzzling detours, twists, or unusual character developments. Sure, it is grounded as a reality-based biography but there is NO flair. Another director could have had more fun with the script. You've seen it all before, the build-up to that one final fight with the most ferocious and feared boxer, the wife's concern, not following the coach's instructions, the favouring crowd.
Lastly, I have one more complaint: Cinderella Man could easily have been at least 40 minutes shorter. Not because it dawdled exactly, but by concentrating the key scenes into a shorter version, it would have been even more poignant.
7/10