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CINDERELLA MAN
By Rachel Deahl Based on the life of prizefighter Jim Braddock, "Cinderella Man" is an unabashedly straightforward fairytale about beating the odds and maintaining hope in the face of despair. Although the story is refreshingly shrouded in a less glamorous version of the rags to riches variety-the most fascinating aspect of Braddock's story is that he remained mostly impoverished through his rise to heavyweight champ of the world-the path there is achingly familiar to many Americans. As inspiring as Braddock's story is-after his career in boxing faded he emerged during the Depression, from severe poverty, to win a 15-round fight against favorite Max Baer in 1935 for the title-"Cinderella Man" never really scratches the surface of it. Though Russell Crowe is once again wonderful in the lead, Braddock is so sincere and perfect that his character lacks complexity. Despite Crowe's skillful portrayal-he fills Braddock with a dignity and tenderness that once again proves how much range he has an actor-the film always seem to be chasing after a myth more than a man. Frustratingly, the portion of Braddock's life where he slipped from heavyweight contender into boxing has-been is skipped in the film. After returning to his stately house in New Jersey after a Madison Square Garden bout, Crowe's fighter wakes up in a run-down apartment, years later, already suffering from the economic fallout of the Depression. Suddenly the kids are wheezing, the wife's filling the milk bottle with water, and Braddock is going into the ring with broken bones because he needs to fight in order to make money. (It's insinuated that Braddock's demise as a promising fighter is tied to the fact that he was forced to fight injured because he needed money after losing his shirt in the market.) O course what's missing most from "Cinderella Man" isn't heart, as much as it is passion. Howard proves ungifted at shooting fight scenes and, overwhelmingly, the bouts between Russell Crowe and his opponents lack artistry. Because boxing is such a familiar and powerful metaphor for life, and because it's been featured as such in so many movies, it's increasingly hard to make the sight of two men beating the crap out of each other look fresh and new.
Nonetheless, this
is a necessity is any boxing movie. In the ring, where the movie's most
engaging moments should come, "Cinderella Man" stumbles and become staid.
The camera bobs and weaves with its hero on the tarp and against the
ropes, but the horror and hope Braddock must have found in that ring never
come across in Howard's movie.
DOMINION: Schrader's dud of a movie, which might not have drawn much of a crowd on a non-"Star Wars" opening weekend, is a sly choice to open alongside "Episode III" because the shared release highlights the unintended similarities between the two films. Both are overarching tales of good and evil; both are attached to franchises that began as blockbuster movies in the '70s; and both are attempts to reinvigorate a once-beloved series that has, in recent years, disappointed fans. Here's to hoping Lucas can do more with those light sabers than Schrader does with his crucifixions and holy water.
The interesting backstory of "Dominion," is that production company Morgan Creek shelved it indefinitely after the studio saw the finished product. Unhappy with the result, Morgan Creek hired another director (Renny Harlin, responsible for turkeys like "Cutthroat Island") to shoot another version of the film which was released last year as "Exorcist: The Beginning." The result, interesting as it might be as a random piece of cinematic trivia, was that two crappy films were unleashed on the public. In a piece in the April 29th issue of "Entertainment Weekly," Morgan Creek president Jim Robinson was quoted as saying Schrader's version was cast aside because it was too "cerebral." While I never saw Harlin's entry, which didn't make much of a ripple at the box office, it's clear that Robinson was right about one thing: Schrader tries to turn a relatively simple yarn about an exorcism into an investigation of Christianity, morality and Western culture. To put it kindly, young Linda Blair spewing bile and turning her head 360 degrees is much more in tune with what this recycled storyline can, and should, bear. Set in South Africa in 1947, "Dominion" follows the burdensome existence of the same priest, Lancaster Merrin, who exorcised Ms. Blair's demonic intruder in the original 1973 film, "The Exorcist." After surviving a "Sophie's Choice"-like ultimatum-three years earlier in Poland he's asked by Nazi soldiers to offer up the name of a villager to die or see an entire crowd of innocents slaughtered-Merrin all but abandoned God. Then, called to South Africa, he winds up in a town where Lucifer happens to have invaded a gimpy local resident.
Schrader, who tries
to explore the nature of evil (Is God responsible for the horrible things
that happen or are human beings to blame?) in a thoughtful manner, never
scratches the surface. Setting the film in the post-war era, and trying to
touch on issues about colonialism and the clashes it produced between
indigenous cultures and the West, Schrader seems to have forgotten what
film he was making.
And, after awhile,
you're not so much praying for Satan to be exorcised from the earth as
Schrader's film to be exorcised from the screen.
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