Born in New Zealand and bred in Australia, Russell Crowe has been makin’ movies, singin’ songs and delightin’ ’round the world for almost four decades. He’s portrayed generals and goof-offs, cops who sing and sting, demons and diviners, pastors and priests, gladiators, reporters, whistleblowers and more than his fair share of murderers (in reality and virtual reality).
In honor of Crowe’s 60th birthday this month, Midwest Film Journal is celebrating the actor. We’ll look at the lightning-rod controversy of his 1992 Australian breakout, the genre pictures with which he broke out in Hollywood circa 1995, his early-2000s ascent into a leading man with consecutive Oscar nominations, his occasional zags into unexpected genres like comedy, musicals and exploitative schlock, and many things in between. This April, MFJ truly has A Murder of Crowes.
As James J. Braddock, Russell Crowe is the poster child for the American man. In Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man, based on historical events, Crowe plays Braddock, a New Jersey boxer who navigates his career and family life amid the unforgiving Great Depression. The movie opens with Braddock’s success in the ring, promising salary, rising talent and beautiful home, and then makes a hard shift into the lack of all those things. In only a few minutes, Braddock goes from riches to rags. The set design and color grading help establish this sense of loss and poverty, but it is really Crowe’s acting that seals the illusion.
Such losses seem to betray everything for which Braddock stands. His morals and ethics are rigid. He’s never tempted to stray from the righteous, golden path. He performs well in the ring but is humble and straightforward. He seeks to do right by his family and the law. Crowe certainly embodies this pristine exterior with ease. Throughout the film, he holds a brutally nasal New Jersey accent reminiscent of Woody Allen doing impersonations. He has a nice face, with a smile that’s a testament to the American Dream of standing firm with family during hardship and pushing for a life of greater financial success. His slicked-back hair is like what you’d find in The Great Gatsby. Crowe portrays a real Clark Kent, the all-American man.
On his face, Braddock is not a terribly interesting character. Everything about him is orderly and spotless, but that also makes for a rather dull straight-shooter. Thankfully, Crowe’s aptitude for internalized performance enhances Braddock’s appeal as the film’s central figure.
At the start of the movie, Crowe makes Braddock noticeably hyper-observant of his surroundings. He constantly looks around, observing the people he’s with and the places he’s in, taking in every detail. Crowe’s attention to the minutiae evokes a feeling that Braddock perhaps feels like he’s in a dream that he might wake up from and lose the things he now has. Crowe’s acting foreshadows the events to come. The Great Depression diminishes Braddock’s apparent attention to detail. Crowe keeps his head centered when Braddock is at home talking with his wife, almost as if he is still in the boxing ring and his survival instinct has kicked in. Not much interests him. No quirky details or fascinating fixtures. It’s almost as if he rejects his reality as his own.
If Braddock’s wife and children are now cold and hungry with no future meals in store, he would rather look for work farther away from them than to steal close to home. Indeed, when Braddock learns food he’s received was lifted from a butcher, he returns it. Even amid his rejection of reality, Braddock encapsulates the idea of the rule of law in his actions.
It would be easy to see a character like Braddock and pass quick judgment, or at least find them extremely unbelievable. To choose starvation for yourself and your family over breaking the law to bring them comfort is a significant, perhaps even unrealistic decision. But Crowe’s humanistic performance lends genuine validity to Braddock’s actions — tying nuanced expressions with his kids into how he acts in the ring during boxing matches, and Crowe maintains these quirks and mannerisms throughout the film.
The fluidity and consistency of Crowe’s in-ring and with-family performances create a familiarity both when throwing his jabs and lifting his kids in play. Crowe is jovial and chipper whether tiptoeing and dancing during tense, rib-cracking fights, making meals in his kitchen or chasing his son in a courtyard.
But Crowe locks in when the going gets rough as well, evidenced by a training scene where Braddock is dizzily tossed around in the ring and debating his career in an office of higher-ups who couldn’t care less about him. Crowe puts on that thousand-yard stare of intense concentration, glazes his face with contemplative solitude, and shows the audience a more stoic side of Braddock’s determination to do right by himself, his family and his future.
Braddock’s code of ethics kicks in, with his morals and values riding on his gloves as they connect to his opponent’s jaw. Crowe shows his character’s depth on a hair-trigger’s notice, and fully, but only when necessary.
As such, Crowe personifies the ultimate American man (or at least its ideal expression) in Cinderella Man — genuinely kind, concerned for his family, always seeking improvement and eager to shut down arrogance when needed. In other hands, these could be square, static notions. Crowe’s performance lends subtle, nuanced and adaptive elements to these desires. He doesn’t just make an uninteresting person interesting; he makes the American spirit visual.