Cinderella Man is the lost film of 2005.
This may sound crazy when you consider the calibre and high profile of the people involved, and the fact that it was presented as an Oscar contender earlier this year.
But Ron Howard's made-in-Toronto collaboration with Russell Crowe was a bitter disappointment at the boxoffice.
So much so that Universal Studios reopened it for a limited theatrical re-release a week ago, including in Toronto, as a desperate manouevre to find an audience.
The DVD arrives tomorrow. This dual strategy is designed to salvage a title that was intended as a prestige picture, a true-life inspirational tale, and a human counterpart to the hugely successful Seabiscuit.
What went wrong?
Cinderella Man is a biopic of Irish-American boxer James Braddock, a miracle man of the Great Depression who fell on hard times and then staged a stunning career revival while showing a stubborn, hardscrabble nobility.
During the lean years, Braddock protected his family, desperately scraped out a living and proudly refunded his welfare money when he started earning paycheques in the ring again. A good man. The film is as historically accurate as a drama could be without becoming a documentary.
But, did it doom the project that most people don't even remember the name James Braddock, the man who faced the swagger and brute force of Max Baer for the heavyweight championship of the world? That should not matter. Who remembered Seabiscuit? Who really cared about horseracing lore from the 1930s? The film got us involved.
Was the blood sport of boxing a problem? That did not hurt the Oscar-winning Million Dollar Baby. Both Clint Eastwood's film and Cinderella Man are also less about the brutish sport and more about the extraordinary human toll that goes with the triumphs in the ring.
Were the Cinderella Man crew and studios strategists arrogant? The Toronto set was off-limits to Toronto media, blowing a glorious opportunity to raise the project's media profile during production. On release, Crowe, Howard & company did precious little press to aid their cause.
Coincidentally, that left a ravenous segment of the media free to ridiculously overplay Crowe's stupid New York cellphone incident, turning one of the great actors of our time into a bumbling court jester.
The title sucks. Cinderella Man? Might as well call it Cinderfella, a shout out to Jerry Lewis' goofy comic twist on the fairytale. Braddock's odd nickname was hard-earned and came from famed newspaper columnist Damon Runyan.
Yet it now sounds ridiculous, and misleading for a film about boxing, the Depression, and about an Everyman who endures crushing circumstances with his integrity intact.
If Cinderella Man was mediocre, I would not care that it has been lost to mainstream audiences. But it is a beautifully wrought piece with a stunning performance by Crowe in service of the film and of the man he plays.
The charms are subtle compared to, say, Crowe's flash acting in Gladiator or even in Howard's A Beautiful Mind. But that is what this film demanded. Crowe's meticulous work, down to details as precise as Braddock's foot placement in the ring, is a testament to his ability to consume a role and present it selflessly, stripped of movie star baggage.
As Crowe says in the DVD's bonus materials (better late than never): "I think that Braddock's legacy deserves the effort. I think his grandchildren need to see who he was in his time." So do we, the public that should dig up this buried treasure before it is too late.
