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Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Pages: The year’s best movie? Cinderella Man is a shoe-in
By John Pages
Match Point
When was the last time you watched a feel-good movie about men beating each other up?
Try Cinderella Man.
Seventy-seven years ago James Braddock is an amateur light-heavyweight boxer. He is young, handsome and hails from New Jersey. “The Bulldog of Bergen,” as he is called, is on his way to becoming a championship challenger.
Life is very good: Braddock brings home hundreds of dollars after each win – a fortune back in 1928 – and his family lives well.
Then Braddock suffers a broken right hand. His life begins to fall apart. After an embarrassing defeat, the boxing commission revokes his license. At the same time, America is falling into the Great Depression. Braddock, his wife Mae, and their three children – along with millions of others – find themselves barely able to survive. He finds work in New York’s shipyards, but is unable to provide for the family’s basic needs – no milk, no gas, or no electricity. Faced with the prospect of losing his children, he applies for relief. This delivers a hard blow to Braddock – more than any punch he ever received.
Six painful years pass and a chance comeback occurs when his former manager, Joe Gould, offers him $250 to fight a heavyweight contender. It’s been almost a year since he put on mitts. Worse, he has only one day to prepare. No way.
There’s no way Braddock will win. No way.
He does.
Confounding experts, his victory propels him on the fast lane. Despite his light weight and the repeated injuries to his hands, Braddock continues to fight. And win.
Suddenly, the ordinary workingman turns into a mythic hero. Carrying on his shoulders the hopes of the masses, Braddock chooses to do the unthinkable: Take on the heavyweight champion of the world, the ferocious and unstoppable Max Baer, renowned for having killed two men in the ring.
Stop! Stop! I’ll hold it right here...lest I tear apart the suspense. Now go on and send that text message to your wife asking for a date tonight to see the movie. Go on.
My wife? She loved it. You mean women love boxing, since when?
Here’s the good news to all who don’t want any part of this sport that just claimed the life of Leavander Johnson: Cinderella Man is not about boxing. Sure, Braddock is a pug and there are punches thrown and faces are bloodied in this two and a half-hour movie.
But this story is more than boxing. It’s about marriage, about the strength of the bond between Mae and James, about the support of a wife to a husband. This movie is about honor, honesty, heroism. Most of all, it’s about an incredible dose of grit, the will to make the impossible dream come true.
In many ways, you’ve seen Cinderella Man before. The boxing setting is common to Hollywood, so is the comeback story. Back in 1976, Rocky combined both to Oscar-winning glory. Last year’s Million Dollar Baby won trophies at the Academy Awards. But there’s a big difference. This is a true story.
WHAT MAKES GREAT MOVIES GREAT? The acting. Can you imagine a Rocky Balboa that’s not Sylvester Stallone? Or Million Dollar Baby without Hillary Swank, Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman?
In Cinderella Man, Braddock is played by Russell Crowe. Before watching the movie, I ranked Crowe among the best. After watching the movie, I deleted “among” and crowned him “the best.”
Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, The Insider... these are some of the all-time top movies. I wonder why. Here’s why: Crowe was nominated as Best Actor on those movies, bagging the golden Oscar in 2001 as Maximus in Gladiator. Next year, as the envelope is opened on March 5 at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles, it will be a familiar name once more: Russell Crowe.
As Braddock, he spared no sweat, suffering a serious shoulder injury while training and then, by his own count, 12 minor concussions and two broken teeth during the filming.
“Every time I read something about Braddock... every time I learned a little bit more, I just liked him,” Crowe says. “I liked what he stood for. His feet didn’t leave the earth. He was still the same guy. His core values remained the same regardless of failure or success. Right now, at this point in time, I think this film has a lot to say to Americans about what America truly means.
This country was built on the shoulders of Jim and Mae Braddock.”
Renée Zellweger played the role of Braddock’s wife. Like Crowe, the 34-year-old actress has been nominated thrice in the Oscars: Bridget Jones’s Diary (2002), Chicago (2003) and Cold Mountain (last year). She won the Best Supporting Actress trophy for Cold Mountain. She’ll get her fourth straight Oscar nomination for Cinderella Man next year, I swear.
Two more Academy Award-winners in this movie: Director Ron Howard (Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind... and next year’s The Da Vinci Code) and producer Brian Grazer.
“This is a very, very, very, very good movie,” my 15-year-old brother Michael told me the other night.
How many “verys” was that?
Ah, forget it. Add a few more. For this is a very, very good movie.
(john@playhouse.edu.ph)
(September 27, 2005 issue)
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