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Maybe it was all that Opie time on ''The Andy Griffith Show,'' but Ron Howard has always had a streak of Norman Rockwell in him -- a trust in the gritty pieties of faith, family, and personal re-invention in which the American myth is rooted. Howard's inner Rockwell finally comes out of the closet with ''Cinderella Man,'' after years of flirtations (''Apollo 13'') and backing away (''The Missing''), and the result is a broad, foursquare piece of populist filmmaking that happens to be tremendously moving. more...
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There is a moment early in ''Cinderella Man'' when we see Russell Crowe in the boxing ring, filled with cocky self-confidence, and I thought I knew what direction the story would take. I could not have been more mistaken. I walked in knowing nothing about Jim Braddock, ''The Bulldog of Bergen,'' whose riches-to-rags-to-riches career inspired the movie. My friend Bill Nack of Sports Illustrated, who just won the A.J. Liebling Award, the highest honor a boxing writer can attain, could have told me all about Braddock, but I am just as happy to have gone in cold, so that I could be astonished by Crowe's performance. more...
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''Prize fighting lives by its heavyweight champion,'' writes John D. McCallum in ''The World Heavyweight Boxing Championship.'' ''The sport is a dormant giant that explodes into life only a few times a year with that magical phrase: Heavyweight Championship Bout.'' more...
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Critic Reviews