Last night, my boys and I attended Cinderella Man, the Ron Howard-produced movie about Depression-era fighter and folk hero Jim Braddock (played by Russell Crowe), the unlikely underdog who defeated heavyweight champ Max Baer in a 15-round free-for-all in 1935.
Although flawed in several respects, the movie is highly entertaining. Leads Crowe and Renee Zellweger are superb, and the staging of the fight scenes is flat-out remarkable, even making Scorsese’s fine depiction of the fights in Raging Bull seem pedestrian in comparison.
However, the movie is worth attending alone to see the performance of Paul Giamatti, who steals the show in playing Joe Gould, Braddock’s manager and friend. In hilarious and believable fashion, Giamatti uses the phrase “sonuvabitch” throughout the movie to express a remarkably wide range of reactions and emotions. His performance is one of the most nuanced and intelligent that I have seen in years, and reflects an actor who is clearly at the top of his profession right now. Don’t miss it.