Cinderella Man

Cinderella Man couldn`t be a more cliched, riches-to-rags-to-riches tale if it tried. Breadcrumbs are scraped under dim lighting, kids with dirt on their faces play in the street, grown men fight back tears in front of their families. Jim J. Braddock's real-life tale of getting a second chance for himself and his family is no doubt an inspiring one, made all the more unlikely by his Depression-era surroundings, but Ron Howard and crew refuse to allow a drop of nuance into their storytelling and, as a result, Braddock's bio becomes fodder for Hollywood overstatement, combined with a pouring of molasses over the ugly facts of actual history.

Inexplicably, Cinderella Man becomes compelling for about five minutes as the third act begins, propelled by what is easily the best scene in the film: a restaurant stand-off between Braddock (Russell Crowe) and Max Baer (Craig Bierko), the Jewish boxer and World Heavyweight Champion who twice killed opponents in the ring and whom Braddock must box to make his fairy tale comeback complete.

This scene, along with an earlier, excellent one in which Braddock travels to a private club in Manhattan filled with rich boxing promoters to beg for money, reminds viewers where the real tension of the Depression lied: between classes. Ron Howard would never explicitly make a biting, class-warfare film about the Depression -- he's too drawn to optimism for that -- but, with the two scenes mentioned, he offers a glimpse into what Cinderella Man could have been.

In the standoff scene, the restaurant is posh, Braddock and Baer are dressed up and accompanied by dining parties, but they are also painfully out of place, working class heroes from immigrant pedigree who don't belong where the upper class hangs. Speaking quietly, Braddock asks Baer to spare his life, as he has a wife and three kids to take care of. Baer asks Braddock to go down early, in order to avoid getting killed in the ring. The scene is macho with Baer remaining every bit the arrogant heel and Braddock the proud hero, but it's also shockingly intimate, even tender.

When Mae Braddock (Renee Zelwegger) breaks up the meeting by throwing a glass of water in Baer's face -- for saying that she's too pretty to become a widow, followed by Braddock's manager Joe Gould (Paul Giamatti) trying to attack Baer for the same comment -- the scene becomes classic, offering a rare glimpse of imaginary life on an otherwise barren landscape. For the first, and one of the only times in Cinderella Man, all four characters are allowed to become more than the single note they have been told to play throughout: Jim Braddock`s heroism is replaced by fear, Mae Braddock breaks refinement to express rage, Joe Gould chooses his fists over his mouth, and Max Baer seems, if only for a moment, human.

That Max Baer's Jewish heritage is never mentioned in Cinderella Man indicates how uncomfortable Howard is when it comes to handling slippery, complex antagonists. On the other hand, Howard deserves credit whenever a living, breathing "bad guy" actually makes it into one of his films. Howard has always preferred antagonists that aren`t human -- the faulty piece of wiring on the Apollo 13 shuttle, the fires of Backdraft, or the schizophrenia of A Beautiful Mind -- to bad guys that audiences have to hate. Even Cinderella Man fits this mould, as the Depression is the real enemy here. Max Baer is just the guy who got in Jim Braddock's way during his return to glory.

The extras on this two-disc set aren't as thorough as the three-disc set released by Universal on the same day, but it does just fine in fleshing out all things Cinderella Man. Individual audio commentaries by Howard, Goldsman, and Hollingsworth indicate that taking Hollingsworth's original screenplay from page to screen was not a pleasant experience for all, namely Hollingsworth. The indication he gives throughout is that Howard, Crowe, and Goldsman wanted nothing to do with him once pre-production was in full swing, though he also bites his tongue by never explicitly saying so.

Other features detail Crowe's painstaking transformation into Braddock, the casting of the key players in the film (Renee Zelwegger is especially well-cast, as her puffy eyes and red face in real life makes it look like she's just gone ten rounds), Howard and Crowe meeting members of Braddock's real family on the set, and a feature with Norman Mailer watching the original Braddock-Baer fight with Howard, Goldsman, and Brian Grazer. Mailer is lucid and insightful, while Brian Grazer still looks like Evil Eddie from Fright Night.

The best feature on the disc is a 10-minute doc about legendary boxing trainer Angelo Dundee, who befriended Crowe in preparing him for the film and can be seen in Cinderella Man as the older, stalky, bald man in Crowe's corner. Dundee deserves a feature-length documentary unto himself, as he's the sweetest man ever, full of pleasant anecdotes and a bursting joy for life. Crowe and Howard laugh as they explain that Dundee was so into the boxing matches while shooting, it had to repeatedly be explained to him that if his corner wasn't doing well, it wasn't because his man was actually losing, it's just what the filmmakers happened to be filming at the time.

If Hollywood continues to package history like this, fifty years from now we can expect an uplifting film about how Hulk Hogan's body slamming of Andre the Giant at WrestleMania 3 sadly came six months too soon. If only he could have slammed him after the Stock Market Crash of 1987 and not before, everyone could have found hope in the blonde champion lifting the French colossus over his head, as if Hogan were collectively slamming everyone's problems of bankruptcy and despair into the mat. Instead, we were propelled into darkness.

That may sound ridiculous, but it's no more ridiculous than thinking that people who were watching themselves and their families die due to impoverishment and hopelessness could have gotten more than a few evening's worth of entertainment out of Jim Braddock's miraculous comeback to boxing. This is a great story, but I have a feeling it meant a lot more to Braddock and those around him than to the average Joe trying to survive from one day to the next. History, and this film, would have you think otherwise. -- Jason Woloski