Product Description

Academy Award winners Russell Crowe and Renee Zellweger star in this triumphant, powerfully inspiring true story. In a time when America needed a champion, an unlikely hero would arise, proving how hard a man would fight to win a second chance for his family and himself. Suddenly thrust into the national spotlight, boxer Jim Braddock would defy the odds against him and stun the world with one of the greatest comebacks in history. Driven by love for his family, he willed an impossible dream to come true.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5487 in DVD
• Brand: Universal Studios
• Released on: 2005-12-06
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 144 minutes

Amazon.com
Cinderella Man is a wholesome slice of old-fashioned Americana, offering welcomed relief from the shallowness of many summer blockbusters. In dramatizing the legendary Depression-era comeback of impoverished boxer Jim Braddock, director Ron Howard benefits from another superb collaboration with his A Beautiful Mind star Russell Crowe, whose portrayal of Braddock is simultaneously warm, noble, and tenacious without resorting to even the slightest hint of sentimental melodrama. The desperate struggle of the Depression is more keenly felt here than it was in Seabiscuit, and Howard shows its economic impact in ways that strengthen the bonds between Braddock, his supportive wife (Renée Zellweger) and three young children, and his loyal manager (Paul Giamatti); all are forced to make sacrifices leading up to Braddock's title bout against heavyweight champion Max Baer (Craig Bierko) in one of greatest boxing matches in the history of the sport. Boasting the finest production design, cinematography and editing that Hollywood can offer, this is a feel-good film that never begs for your affection; it's just good, classical American filmmaking, brimming with qualities of decency and fortitude that have grown all too rare in the big-studio mainstream. --Jeff Shannon

From The New Yorker
Russell Crowe teams up with the director Ron Howard for the first time since "A Beautiful Mind," and instead of schizophrenia we get broken ribs. This is the story of the boxer James J. Braddock, who fell from favor during the Great Depression, only to claw his way back and snatch the World Heavyweight title in 1935. Crowe lends the character a determined dourness, refusing to turn Braddock's bewildering comeback into a victory parade-a good thing, too, for without that unsmiling restraint the whole saga might sound too good to be true. Braddock is presented as a man without sin, his wife, Mae (Renée Zellweger), maintains a rosy-cheeked optimism even when food is scarce, and their children form a group portrait of well-scrubbed devotion. Anybody whose memory resounds to "Raging Bull," with its bedevilled hero, will feel badly shortchanged by this picture, yet Howard is the right man for stirring simplicity, and his casting is on the money. Braddock's opponents are gratifyingly bisonlike, and Paul Giamatti has a ball in the role of Joe Gould, the trainer who stood by his man. Who would have bet that the grouch of "American Splendor" could end up so natty and, yes, splendid, in a gray plaid suit and tie?-Anthony Lane -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker