![]() Little did he know, it was this practice which would begin to turn the tide in his favour. When he had to give up boxing to work on the docks, he found his right hand had become almost useless, meaning he had to compensate with the left. James Braddock training in Florida, 1936. ![]() This was the beginning of a decline that would continue over his next 33 fights, with his right hand fracturing again and again. His disappointment was compounded by the damage he did to his right hand in the process, fracturing it in several places. In 1928, in his title-shot fight, he lost to Tommy Loughran. Photograph: FPG/Getty Imagesīraddock had turned pro at the age of 21 in 1923, and seemed to be about to make it big when, to the surprise of the pundits, he knocked out Tuffy Griffiths. Braddock went on to win the title after 15 rounds. James Braddock and Max Baer trade blows during a title bout in Long Island City, New York in 1935. It was a disappointment that might have finished a lesser man. Once, he had dreamed of playing college football for Notre Dame. Indeed, it was the Great Depression that found him at his lowest ebb forced to turn his back on a floundering boxing career to work as a longshoreman to keep his family from poverty. The son of an Irish mother and Anglo-Irish father, and born in Hell’s Kitchen in New York in 1905, Braddock faced a difficult path at the beginning of a turbulent century. Braddock had an unerring ability to make the best of a bad situation. Give me Fat City any day.Although he considered himself to have “more brawn than brains”, James J. Cinderella Man 'couldda' and 'shouldda' been a contender'. (As a piece of mainstream narrative storytelling, Shine surpasses that film tenfold). He gave A Beautiful Mind the same kind of treatment too, transforming an otherwise tough and compelling real-life story a family feel good movie twist. He has become the new Steven Spielberg, ironically at a time when Spielberg is going back to the start of his career and making tougher, more uncompromising movies. It is no surprise though as this is the kind of formula Howard's movies possess now. But everyone is so squeaky clean and noble in this film it made my flesh crawl. There is also a lot of attention to detail spent on the period (1930s) and the 'sweet science' of boxing. That is when the film really sparks to life out of an otherwise dreary, by the numbers quagmire. Crowe's brute performance is fantastic to watch with his and Giamatti's scenes in particular terrific. Only it is a hellishly simplistic, over-sentimentalised fairytale that feels more like a Hallmark greeting card than the powerful, multi-layered drama it should have been. The title Cinderella Man implies fairytale and that's just what this film is. Braddock and his feisty manager Joe Gould (the great Paul Giamatti) cook up a scheme to pit him against the reigning world heavyweight champ Max Baer (Criag Bierko), a killer in the ring. Battling injury, controversy, and with a wife (Renee Zellwegger) and three young children to support, the odds are stacked against him. Braddock, a working class hero who fights his way back into the ring after a spectacular fall from grace. Russell Crowe plays real-life boxer Jame J. His latest film Cinderella Man has all the hallmarks of an 'oscar pic' and it reunites him with Australian actor Russell Crowe ( Gladiator), nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award for their last project together, A Beautiful Mind (2001).Ĭinderella Man is set in New York during the down years of the Great Depression. ![]() American director Ron Howard ( Splash, Apollo 13) is no doubt hoping lightning will strike twice for his new film about another underdog in the ring, James J. Million Dollar Baby cleaned up at the 2004 Oscars and rightly so, a riveting drama about personal struggle and boxing.
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