Sucker Punch

From left: Jim Braddock (Russell Crowe) and opponent Corn Griffin (Art Binkowski) in the film Cinderella Man. Photo George Kraychyk. Courtesy Universal Pictures.

This isn’t a threat, but should Opie require an epitaph, he might consider the following: Here lies Ron Howard, Eternal Optimist. As a director, he holds fast to the unflappable, very American conviction that any problem — including schizophrenia (A Beautiful Mind), aging (Cocoon) and fire (Backdraft) — can be overcome with a hearty dash of old-fashioned moxie. For Howard, the intricate, unpredictable engine known as the human spirit clicks along in only one mode — triumphant — and in Cinderella Man, it’s virile enough to defeat even the Great Depression.

Russell Crowe plays James J. Braddock, a real-life New Jersey boxer who hit a slump in the dirty ’30s and landed on public relief. On screen, Jimmy is ever heroic in the face of hardship, handing over his only piece of ham to one of several soot-cheeked offspring who dangle from their parents’ hips like grapes. Speaking of ham, Braddock ends up with hat in hand — no metaphor intended; it’s an actual hat — at the boxing commission, begging money from his former employers so he can pay his electric bill.

The hat and ham are the dominion of screenwriting, not life, the kind of manipulative, literal images that inhibit any deeper understanding of the characters’ inner workings. (If these things really happened to Braddock, then the writers needed to invoke the no-one-will-believe-it rule and massage the truth into something more poetic.) As each bite of ham is wolfed down by a telegenic child actor, we are reminded that this is just a movie and these are just the problems of movie stars. Howard invites us to be tourists of historical suffering. The gutter dwelling is temporary, and prurient. Take comfort, winks Howard: all will be resolved tidily.

As such, Cinderella Man is a great injustice to those who survived the pre-New Deal recession, Braddock included. Never once did I really come close to understanding what hungry bones and bellies feel like. Howard shoots in browns and greys, presumably to wax nostalgic, but the film looks swampy and is actually kind of hard to see. The phoniness reaches a pinnacle when Braddock learns his milk payments are past due, and the camera lingers in the courtyard of the tenement apartment where everything is dipped in shadow except our hero and the milk bottle, both lit by a saintly cone of white light. One half expects Grizabella from Cats to leap from behind the dented garbage cans for a rousing chorus of Memory.

Braddock (Crowe) and his destitute darlings in a rare moment of joy. Photo George Kraychyk. Courtesy Universal Pictures.

As always, Howard burrows, tick-like, into the soft, sentimental spots. He’s a good tick, and if one is seeking a movie that’s simply a base emotional purge, he’s the man. When one of the children lets loose a dry hack from behind the curtain that substitutes for a door in the Braddock clan’s drafty basement apartment — what else can go wrong here? — even a Grinch is bound to spare at least one, icy tear.

The fact that Howard is so good at tweaking our emotional hot spots is perhaps why it’s more odious that he does; if only he would use his formidable power for good, not mediocrity. Braddock’s fluky, inherently cheer-able ascent to respectability — remarkably, he won several fights after years out of the game, even going for the heavyweight title — is marred by Howard’s own full-throttle assault on the audience’s hearts. As the outmatched Braddock swings away, he flashes back to the little children and his perpetually supportive wife, played by Renee Zellweger. She is truly terrible, spastically twitching her squinty face and wielding a wandering Joisy accent that sounds like Barbara Walters: “You aw the champion of my hawt, Jim J. Bwaddock!” (Pucker lips and squint already-squinted eyes for emphasis.)

The boxing scenes are, at first, shot with a clarity and directness that recalls another recent fight melodrama, the superior Million Dollar Baby. But then, Howard gets nervous — he’s left us alone with our interpretations too long, God forbid — and buries the boxing under cheap tricks like slo-mo, black and white, camera bulbs popping at the point of contact and yet more poverty flashbacks. Get it? Braddock must rise above the humiliations of the poor through sheer will, manifest in his bruised fighter’s paws. The message is a slightly icky, mercenary interpretation of the American dream: the jobless masses just need to buck up. Get a trainer, get on with it and in one final act of hagiography, return your welfare money to the government once you make a mint in the ring, just like Jimmy. (Braddock is so glorified that the film’s coda asserts he not only went on to greatness in WWII, but also helped build Brooklyn’s Verrazzano Bridge, the latter being the sort of detail that warrants more than a casual mention.)

Braddock (Crowe) discussing strategy with manager Joe Gould (Paul Giamatti). Photo George Kraychyk. Courtesy Universal Pictures.

Crowe has shed the quirks that grated in A Beautiful Mind, playing Braddock with a dignity as quiet as such an emotionally loud film allows. Repeatedly, Crowe shows a winning ability to elevate the broadest Hollywood material — Gladiator — by delivering a specific, tightly honed performance. Nearby, Paul Giamatti struggles equally valiantly to make something substantial out of the underwritten role of “trusty coach.” The struggle ends in a draw.

The triumvirate of Crowe, Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsmith made the Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind, too. That film warped the true story of mathematician John Nash for its own feel-good ends to such a staggering degree — good-bye homosexuality; good-bye out-of-wedlock son; good-bye racist tendencies; hello heartwarmer! — that Howard has little credibility left as a historical filmmaker. I don’t claim to know whether or not Cinderella Man is entirely true to the life of James Braddock, but through the fairy dust masking anything like a human flaw, I could barely see the man, let alone learn anything of substance about him. What I learned is what Howard always teaches: that faith in the human spirit doesn’t mean faith in the audience.

Cinderella Man opens across Canada June 3.

Katrina Onstad writes about the arts for CBC.ca.