Jim and his family fight the depression, and the family is stable again. Jim promises Mae,who hates the idea of boxing, that its only one fight.In his "comeback fight" Jim feels great and eventually wins it, and Joe sees it too. Joe gets Jim only one comeback fight against Corn Griffin. Jim finally realizes he needs to get back into boxing to support his family.
After losing the fight, Jimmy Johnston tells Joe "We're revoking his license, Whatever Braddock was gonna do in boxing, he's done it."(pg 58) Him and his family are struggling financially so Jim has to go work at the docks for countless hours just to keep his family off of the streets.For a little extra cash he sells his boxing shoes and all his equipment.Jim and his family basically have nothing but each other, they have no food or heat in the house. His boxing career is at a low and just as this is happening, the Great Depression hits.
He loses the Championship bout and his next ten fights, and on top of all of that he breaks his hand in a fight against Abe Feldman. Jim finds himself in the championship fight, then things all go downhill from there. Especially from the prize money he earned for knocking out Tuffy Griffiths at the Garden. Jim Braddock, a man from New Jersey with a wife and 3 kids, has a boxing career and is pretty wealthy from all of his boxing winnings. Solid A.Cinderella Man by Marc Cerasini is a story about man who overcame the heavy odds against him, and rose to the top. It is a great movie, with authentic heart. We applauded Braddock's wins, suffered his defeats. The audience was like a prize fight audience, cheering, booing, gasping, groaning during the fights. I didn't expect to be able to watch, but like Braddock's terrified wife Mae, I was unable to tear myself away. These were among the most exciting last twenty minutes I've seen on film. Analogous to watching Howard's film "Apollo 13", you may know the outcome, but there's wonderful suspense in the details. If you don't know, DON'T look it up before you see the movie, and if you DO KNOW, DON'T TELL, but go. Doubtless many people know the history of James Braddock, and know the outcome of his fights, including the championship bout with Max Baer, who had already killed two men in the ring. But when Braddock is later asked at a press conference why he is fighting at his age and after so many poor showings, all he has to say is "milk" to be supremely eloquent. Crowe as Braddock with hat in hand and tears in his eyes, begging for twenty dollars so he can get his children back into his home, is the personification of pride sacrificed to desperation. The bleakness of the times is the graininess and the sepia/greyness of the camera shots the images are stark but completely descriptive. Without using violins or cliché' pull-back shots showing the numbers of people homeless and in soup lines, Howard makes the Depression a visceral reality with scenes of near-hopeless men at the docks, pleading for a day's work a stolen salami Crowe's giving his daughter his breakfast piece of bologna, telling her he dreamed he was full. Ron Howard has made of the real life of Depression-era prize-fighter James J. But for all of Russell Crowe's reputation for being "difficult", it is hard to think of actors who can equal his personal force on the screen. You have to believe they are at the top of their game.
It is not that Renee Zellwegger and Paul Giamatti, Paddy Considine, Bruce McGill and Craig Bierko, among others, give less than stellar performances: they all live up to their justifiably great reputations. I feel like I am being punched, as Renee' Zellwegger's character Mae Braddock says, and I'm not as tough as these prize fighters.
Cinderella man serial#
I've already seen "Million Dollar Baby" and "Raging Bull" this year, and accidentally watched part of one of the "son of Rocky" serial movies on a Saturday afternoon. The dilemma: I hate boxing movies I love Russell Crowe movies.
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