accessAtlanta

'Cinderella Man' pulls no formulaic punches

Newspaper writers can be glib coiners of nicknames for their more notorious subjects, be it Tricky Dick or the Runaway Bride. But when a writer decides to dub someone the Cinderella Man, especially when that someone is a heavyweight champion with anvil fists, he might check to make sure his own nickname isn't of dubious provenance.

In Ron Howard's solid and predictably rousing melodrama "Cinderella Man," the fellow who christens Russell Crowe's boxer with the girly sobriquet goes by Sporty. He's a sportswriter. Named Sporty. (Snicker, titter.) Oh, Sporty, Mr. Cinderella Man wants to talk to you. Alone.

Universal Studios 'Cinderella Man' 3 out of 5 stars Director: Ron Howard Starring: Russell Crowe, Renee Zellweger, Connor Price, Paul Giamatti, Craig Bierko Run time: 144 minutes Release date: June 3, 2005 Rating: PG-13 for intense boxing violence and some language. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate "Cinderella Man"   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Actually, Russell Crowe's Jim Braddock, a rags-to-riches pugilist who's as ferocious as Mother Teresa outside the ring, lets the name roll off his beefy back despite razzing from friends. That's what kind of movie "Cinderella Man" is. It's a Ron Howard movie — square, ingratiating, spirit-swelling, made with a muscular efficiency few films can touch. It's engaging, if not really fascinating.

Looking gaunter than usual — it's the Depression; dinner consists of fried bologna slivers; you'd thin out, too — Crowe projects a stern, saintly presence as true-life boxer Braddock, a New Jersey Irish Catholic who glanced greatness in the late 1920s before a busted right hand vaulted him to the bread lines.

Howard, whose militant need to please is almost Spielbergian, sends Crowe through a slalom course of hokum, where the obstacles are small flapping flags of patriotic piffle and an aura of ersatz glory that feels inflated by a tire pump. The actor mostly swings around these crimps. The script by Cliff Hollingsworth and master craftsman Akiva Goldsman is lean and deftly toned with pathos and wit and historical grain, yet occasionally its underlying simplicity peeks through to snap the spell. When I heard a line such as, "You are the champion of my heart," my heart, which has no champions, took a teeny dip.

While Crowe and his manager Joe Gould — played with anxious spring by the always fun to watch Paul Giamatti — engine the boxing drama, Renee Zellweger has a commendably substantial role as Braddock's wife, Mae. (The great Giamatti cuts a comically globular figure here. His head is a perfect egg. He has ping-pong balls for eyes.)

Wearing her weird citrus-sucking expression, a flinty Zellweger holds down the domestic love story at the film's heart. She is more than the concerned wifey; with a huff and a puff, she takes matters into her own hands when her husband's ambitions require a reality check. He obliges, demonstrating his iron fealty to family, while feeding an air of infallibility the movie is determined to underscore.

The movie blows over Braddock's pre-Depression greatness with a mere glimpse of the middle-class comfort he enjoyed. This weakens the impact of his downfall, when the Braddocks take up a heatless one-room shack Dickens would find cramped. A pall of oppressive misfortune envelops the movie, and Howard amplifies the dusty golds and browns that seem to mark every color film set in the '30s and '40s — that phony sepia wash that leaves one wondering if primary colors were another sad casualty of the Crash.

The Depression forces the great fighter — a great fighter in the ring and in the big bout of life, the movie pummels home — to gulp his Olympian pride. He takes hardscrabble jobs at the docks and, his chin quivering, applies for welfare to support the family. Humility and pride get a workout in this psychologically black-and-white portrait.

To play the world's greatest father, most loving husband and most honest man since ol' Abe, Crowe, a classy actor with the rugged, timeless screen charisma of Clark Gable or Marlon Brando, channels the noble suffering he got so right in "Gladiator" and Howard's "A Beautiful Mind." But he would be more believable if he also summoned some of the hero's flaws of his whistle-blower in "The Insider."

Braddock's life of gloomy struggle turns around when he's offered a fight in 1934. He wins, igniting an improbable streak that shoots him back to the boxing big-time (even if we never see him train or eat properly; no "Rocky"-like montages here). The climax is a match with champion Max Baer (Craig Bierko — marvelous), a handsome hunk whose fists have killed two prior challengers.

The mood of the film's ending is no surprise, though Howard generates a throbbing intensity during the final fight that momentarily muddles the outcome's certitude. Howard proves that, post-"Raging Bull," there are only so many ways to shoot boxing. He relies on the usual slo-mo, freshets of sweat, exploding flash bulbs, subjective point of view and the thrash and thunder of punches. And he does it well, conjuring a raw, thrilling brutality that rattles you.

At these moments you forgive Howard's relentlessly anonymous direction, a kind of competent blah, a featureless functionality. His movies bear the whiff of American exceptionalism and all the heroism, grit and hard-won glory that connotes. With strategic musical swells and searching close-ups, the films are sincere and grave, aiming for the sentiment in the heart as much as the lump in the throat.

In a boxing picture, you also want the punch in the gut. "Cinderella Man" ducks that, but it makes contact in other ways that count.