You've seen it before but it is still professionally effective

Rating: Null/10 (11 September 2008)

Once a young, promising boxer injury and back luck has seen Jim Braddock turn in one poor fight after another to the point where he is stripped of his boxing license and forced to looked for other work to support his wife and young children. This career change comes just as the country enters an economic depression and, like the rest of the country Jim and his family struggle to get by. Eventually he is forced to swallow his pride and start collecting welfare to get by. An injury to another fighter ahead of a big night gives Jim one last payday as his agent manages to talk the commission into letting him back due as nobody else will do it at short notice. Jim takes the fight for the money but knows that a win could start him back again  but he has no idea how important this fight is for more than just him.
People on this site are praising this film and also wondering why it "flopped" (which is arguable but I'll let it stand) but to me it is perfectly understandable because the film is nothing wonderfully brilliant and is very much a package deal that perhaps people weren't in the mood for. I'm not sure if it is the presence of Crowe, Zellweger or what but here we are. What I mean by a "package deal" is that this is another one of those sports movies that follows the "against all odds" rise of the "little fella" when the rise takes on significant to the community/country. The obvious parallel is Seabiscuit and in a way Cinderella Man does the same thing in the same sort of way. So the sense of period is done really well through costumes and sets, the cast has big names, the big sporting events (in this case the fights) are done with a touch of slow-motion and, as the crowd rises, so does the music; whether you like it not, when they are done right they are very good at sweeping you up in the feelings.
Cinderella Man is no exception and it does it all with a professional polish and grand sweep. The details of the story are different but essentially it is the same film and unlikely to be considered "great" on its own terms  because it doesn't really have any. That said, it is another good film in this mould and by the end, when the music came up at the end, of course I was into it. Crowe does well to hold back his usual arrogance to be quite a polite figurehead for the film and makes it easy for you to get behind his character even if you don't like him as a person. Zellweger doesn't quite manage the same feat though, and her pained look and trademark whine was quite annoying to me and I didn't like her performance. Giamatti embraces the trainer cliché and makes it work for him while support from Considine, McGill and others help round out a starry cast. Howard directs with a sturdy hand, doing well with the fight scenes in particular; it isn't all down to him but I did think he let the sweeping meaning of the final fight get away with him a little bit but to be honest by then I was swept up in it myself.
Cinderella Man is nothing new or remarkable but it is still an easily enjoyable and warming sports movie in the mould of Seabiscuit and the like.