Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Yep. The long-delayed Russell Crowe boxing film has finally started test screenings, and we had two spies in the audience last night. Here’s what they had to say:
Hey guys...
Moonshine here, just back from a first-ever screening (at the Pacific Sherman Oaks Galleria) of Cinderella Man, the latest Oscar-bait flick from the group behind A Beautiful Mind. Realizing, of course, that 2005's Oscar derby is still quite a ways away, I've just gotta say that this may very well be Russell Crowe's second chance to scoop up the Oscar he should have won along with his Beautiful Mind co-horts - Ron Howard, Brian Grazer and Akiva Goldsman.
And maybe that's kind of a poetic thing, since this movie is about second chances. It's the story of James J. Braddock, the Depression-era boxing hero who virtually came out of nowhere to become the heavyweight champion of the world. It's a rousingly inspirational movie that had the audience I saw it with cheering in several spots, myself included. And that's really no small feat. I'm not a fan of boxing. I'm definitely not a fan of Crowe (he's like Brando and Nicholson for me...no matter who he's playing I always still see Crowe). But the story's a truly great one, and the movie tips you off to that fact right off the bat with a quote from Damon Runyon pretty much saying that Braddock's tale is the greatest boxing tale ever told. Runyon was also the writer who dubbed Braddock the "Cinderella Man."
In truth, Braddock didn't really come out of nowhere. In the late 1920's, he was a well regarded amateur boxer, until multiple injuries turned him into a routine loser. Despite frequently broken hands, he kept on fighting, until he was finally banned from the game by boxing authorities. And all of this occurred in the midst of the Depression. Like so many others, Braddock lost all of his money in the stock market crash of 1929. The movie kicks off with a brief look at Braddock in his pre-crash prime, then quickly moves forward to 1933 when the guy is struggling just to keep his family fed. The story lingers here for the entire first half of the movie, but that's not a bad thing in any way, shape or form. It is here where we really get to know Jim Braddock, his wife Mae (played by Renee Zellweger, who also puts in an Oscar-worthy performance), their family and friends. And we get to see how absolutely awful the Depression-era was for Americans at the time. The way Braddock digs in to do his best by his family, trying to keep them from starving or freezing to death, is what makes this story truly inspirational. He's a gentle father, a loving and devoted husband, and a dignified and utterly decent guy. Although I was completely won over by the character, I suppose one could argue that the movie goes a little overboard here and practically paints the guy as a saint. Perhaps a few more flaws could have been shown, just to humanize the guy even more, but I'm not really complaining.
The second half of the movie kicks off with the resurrection of Braddock's boxing career, when he's recruited pretty much to stand in as a punching bag for Corn Griffin, who's two fights away from taking on the great Max Baer. Trouble is, Braddock doesn't take the expected fall, and surprising everyone ends up winning the fight fair and square. With a little help from his trainer, Joe (played by Paul Giamatti), Braddock finds his way back into the game. Giamatti's performance is good, though a little over the top in spots. In some scenes, his character comes off as a broad, growly-voiced, "Noo Yawk" stereotype, but in others he's revealed to be the same decent style of guy that Braddock is. In one particular reveal, which I won't spoil, Giamatti's Joe proves that he's pretty much as much of a hero as Braddock turned out to be.
The fight scenes are incredibly well shot, and suprisingly brutal. And, unfortunately, in the case of the final match of the movie, the action goes on way too long. A better, and much more tightly edited scene precedes the final fight, and has Braddock fighting one guy, then the camera takes the place of Braddock. You see arms flying, the camera pans, and suddenly we're on to another fight. It's a spry storytelling device that gets the action moving in a way that I would have liked the final fight to go. But I guess you can't have everything.
That final fight is with Max Baer for the heavyweight championship of the world. For those who aren't up on their boxing history, Baer was a notoriously brutal fighter, who actually killed two men in the ring. In the movie, he's played by Broadway star Craig Bierko, whose casting surprised me. I saw this guy on Broadway several years ago as the cheerful Harold Hill in the Music Man. I have no idea what Baer was really like in his day, but in this movie he's portrayed as an arrogant and obnoxious prick. And Bierko nails him cold. His eyes sparkle with menace as he courts the media whores who grovel around him, and he's clearly having fun. Sadly, I think Bierko might be the only prominent actor in this movie that might get ignored come 2005 awards time, if only because Crowe, Zellweger and Giamatti are likely to garner most of the praise. We'll have to see.
No matter what, though, I think Ron Howard's got a winner here. His direction is very assured and convincing. If he could just tighten up just a few of the longer scenes, I think he'd have an even better movie. Akiva Goldsman's script is outstanding. He's written a convincing story about a man who became a hero to millions of Americans just when they needed it most. And the reason he was a hero was because he was a reflection of every other decent, hard-working guy out there who was doing his best to help himself and his loved ones survive. Along with the rest of the audience, I clapped and cheered at the movie's end, and I left the theater feeling great. We'll see if many others agree with me when this one comes out some time next year.
--Moonshine
Well, at least one other agrees with you, Moonshine. Here we go:
Harry ,
Went to tonight’s “first ever” screening of Cinderella Man at the Sherman Oaks Galleria in CA and I’m happy to report that it was one of the most exhausting and exciting movies I’ve seen in a long while. I was torn as to whether I should write in because Russell Crowe, Ron Howard, and Renee Zellwegger do not exactly constitute a welcome reception from your readers, but I’m going to throw caution to the wind and ask that everyone hear me out.
Here , Crowe plays Jim Braddock, a boxer in the ‘20s and ‘30s who was apparently one of the greatest success stories ever… this we know from the quote placed at the start of the film. I don’t know anything about him, but you really don’t have to. I didn’t really know about Seabiscuit till that movie came out and, suffice it to say, Braddock is the Seabiscuit of the boxing world – an everyman who gave every other man hope during the Great Depression.
The movie starts with him winning a fight and, in the car ride home afterwards, he gets his winnings handed to him by his manager, Joe Gould (played by the critical darling du jour Paul Giamatti). He returns to his lovely home and lovely wife, played by Renee Zellwegger and all is right with the world. Or is it? It certainly wasn’t for me… Crowe replaces his Foghorn Leghorn accent from A Beautiful Mind with a New Joisey accent of the ‘20s. It was a little too much… and hearing Zellwegger do the same thing made me uncomfortable: I could feel that this was going to be a long movie, I was stuck, and I was going to be miserable. The editing seemed off. The pace was odd. And I wasn’t really caring about the characters. So, not a great start.
Well , 5 years later, Jim & his family have hit some hard times along with the rest of the country. It was the Great Depression and, to top things off, he had repeatedly broken his hand and couldn’t win a fight. His license was taken away from him, his bills couldn’t be paid, and he could barely get work at the docks. With his pride stripped away, he goes on government assistance and begs for money from the boxing promoters who put him in the shitter in the first place, just so he didn’t have to send his kids away and so that he could get some heat in his little shack. Because of a fluke, old manager Joe arranges for Jim to fight one fight for a $250 purse. With nothing except some corned beef hash in his stomach and nothing to lose, he wins that fight and his lucky success gets him another fight… and another… and another. And, thus, he becomes a working man’s hero – he was beaten down and he got right back up, again and again. The movie builds up to the final fight with Max Baer, the obnoxious, popular, and deadly champion.
It was at the start of the fight that something happened to me which has never happened before. The complete stranger next to me leaned over and said, “Do you know how this ends?” When I said, “Nope.” She said, “This is killing me… I can’t handle it.” The tension was, well, intense. During the last fight, the person behind me must have bumped the feet of the person sitting next to her. The foot-kick recipient got pissed and they started arguing at full volume. Usually, I would turn around and ask them to be quiet… instead, I turned around and said, “Could you please shut the fuck up?!!” The only reason I bring these stories up is because the film had ratcheted everybody up so much in anticipation for an ending they never really saw coming – a rarity for sports movies. It was then that I realized how effective the whole movie had been.
For some reason, Russell Crowe hasn’t been a favorite of mine. I never go to a movie because he’s in it. But I do end up seeing his movies because they look interesting and every time I leave the movie (except for A Beautiful Mind), I say how incredible he was. This time is no exception. He is so amazingly likeable in this role; he is truly someone you want to root for. He’s a family man, he’s a victim, he’s honorable, he’s tough, and when he smiles at the end of a fight, the crowd around me was giddy right there with him. So, he really ended up delivering an amazing performance and, by the end, the New JOIsey of it all didn’t bother me. He also looked the part of a boxer and he got some chances to show off his skills in the ring.
The real surprise has to be Ron Howard. There are times that he pulls his old stunt of being overly-manipulative but, if they tone that down before the movie comes out, he’ll have his finest film. Thankfully, the manipulation wasn’t for tears, it was for tension. The drama was built quite naturally (most of the time) and he showed sides of The Great Depression that I had never seen before. Many of the scenes with Braddock and his family during those hard times, made me think that he must have used the great film, In America, for inspiration – which is also kind of interesting because the guy in In America was also in this – Paddy Constantine. That’s neither here nor there, though. But it was the fight scenes which knocked me on my ass. He took a page or two from Scorcese, but then turned it up a notch. They are some of the most brutal, fast-paced, realistic fight scenes I’ve seen in a movie. Recently, I caught a documentary about the best pound-for-pound boxers ever. Those guys used to hit hard and insanely fast – not like most of today’s heavyweights. There were about 20 times more punches thrown in those days and this film takes you into each and every one of those punches. I wanted more fights, but I swear I was so exhausted by the end that I don’t know how much more I could have taken. I hate to be so effusive, but I’m on a roll. Howard and his editors could trim a bit of the hour-plus long Depression/no-fighting portion of the film, though I can see how it all built up the sympathy and the characters for the latter portion.
Renee Zellwegger was pretty much underwhelming. It’s not that she was bad, it’s just that she was nothing special. Her role as his wife could have been played by anybody and that anybody probably would have been less distracting.
Of course, the comic relief came from Giamatti who also brought a lot of heart to a role that could have been described as “a younger, chubbier Mick from Rocky.”
After filling out the survey tonight and 20 minutes after the lights went up, my heart was still racing. The applause from the audience was strong and the reactions in the lobby hinted that I wasn’t alone. Will Crowe be nominated for this? I doubt it but, if he were to be, I wouldn’t have any qualms. Now, if he won over Jamie Foxx, I’d have a problem. But he is a great reason to see this when it comes out and, though I know I’ll get killed for this, Ron Howard may have redeemed himself.
Going off to hit something now,
Cut Man Doo
Thanks, guys.
"Moriarty" out.
