Cinderella Man (12A)

Hard luck and struggle are staples of the boxing picture, and they go hand-in-hand with the occupational threat of death every time the hero climbs into the ring. Tragedy hovers at the margins of Cinderella Man, but this was never going to be a Fat City or Raging Bull or even Million Dollar Baby, principally because its director is Ron Howard, a cheerleader of the life-affirming and doom-defying. Howard is working with the same duo, Crowe and the screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, who helped him to the Oscar success of A Beautiful Mind, only this time his hero is undone by historical rather than psychological catastrophe.

The film essentially recounts a comeback story to beat Lazarus. No sooner have we seen Braddock in his pugilistic pomp at Madison Square Garden than poverty shuts off the lights, leaving the boxer, his wife Mae (Renée Zellweger) and their three young children shivering in a basement flat with debts rising as quickly as the damp. At this point you brace yourself for Braddock's fatal flaw to emerge - he becomes a boozer, perhaps, or a bully to his kids - but no, here is a family man who endures the hardscrabble times with unflinching integrity. When his son steals a salami he marches him right back to the butcher's whence it came. Later, having won a large fight purse, he goes to the welfare office and pays back in cash the handouts he received while on his uppers.

All this unfolds in the manner of a children's storybook, somewhat reminiscent of Seabiscuit, another plucky sporting legend that touched the heart of breadline America. It's easier, however, for a racehorse to bear the weight of a generation's hopes than for a boxer; the horse doesn't have to talk to the press, for one thing. Given the film's manipulation of Braddock as a soup-kitchen saint, Crowe does remarkably well to remind us that he's also a human being.

That the virtues he embodies in Jim Braddock - humility, gentleness, soft-spoken decency - seem to be the very ones so absent in Crowe himself (as far as we can tell) is a tribute to his acting, for this man is vividly present to us. In the scene where Braddock hits rock bottom and has to beg for money from his professional confrères, the pathos is so overwhelming you feel the actor almost had to humble himself to make it real. But then his willingness to get inside a role has long been evident, and whether as Napoleonic seadog, neo-Nazi skinhead or New Jersey prizefighter he projects an absolute command of the screen.

He is lent the perfect foil by Paul Giamatti as Joe Gould, Braddock's faithful trainer. No longer the sullen scowler of American Splendor and Sideways, here he's dapper in tweeds and tie, or else puffing on a stogie and offering a pawky front to the world. Almost literally: when Mae calls at his Park Avenue apartment to upbraid him for luring Braddock back to the ring, Joe is revealed to have sold every stick of furniture just to finance his champ.

But the swank facade has been maintained - you have to make people think you're living large. Giamatti, the chinless wonder, is really the actor of the year, a splendid heir to the bug-eyed wonkiness of Peter Lorre and a reminder that such character actors are an increasingly precious commodity. There's something slightly Runyonesque in both his salesmanship and his hectoring encouragement from the corner of the ring. I loved the moment when, as the bell rings, Joe tells Braddock, "Get in there... AND BURY HIM!" Just in case there could be any doubt.

The picture is lightened by the fond interplay between boxer and coach, though it makes little effort to keep us on our toes. It's a foursquare story of underdog resilience, and one looks in vain for a twist on the material. At one point the camera mists up the focus to convey Braddock's punch-drunk vision, and I half-thought this might be signalling the onset of blindness; was fate about to pull a terrible surprise on someone who lived by his quickness of eye? A false alarm. The story's climactic title fight, in which our bantam hero is pitted against a gigantic brute named Max Baer (Craig Bierko), pivots on the troubling fact that Baer twice killed opponents in previous bouts. So we're asked to fear for gentleman Jim's life, yet the orchestral swell of the score and Howard's characteristic sappiness point too clearly in which direction the film will go.

Like the nutty mathematician of A Beautiful Mind, Braddock is a man who bends, but doesn't break. He's got the moxie, the right stuff, to help him survive whatever a heavyweight killer - whatever a national Depression - can throw at him. It would take quite a curmudgeon not to be cheered by this tale of courage in adversity. And it would take an idiot not to mind its complete lack of suspense.