25 best sports movies, ranked by the dust in your eye

25. Cinderella Man (2005)

Directed by Ron Howard
Starring Russell Crowe, Renée Zellweger, and Paul Giamatti

One of the underrated sports movies on this list, Cinderella Man is a film deserving of wider recognition. The film’s lack of prominence likely comes from the fact that it tells the inspirational story of an underdog boxer. As Rocky, another inspirational story about an underdog boxer, is one of the most iconic American films of the last half-century, comparisons were inevitable. And because of the way it unfolds, those comparisons were not necessarily favorable to the newer film.

Cinderella Man tells the real-life story of James Braddock (Crowe), a light heavyweight pugilist who rose to fame during the Great Depression. However, the film does not begin with Braddock as a young contender eager to prove himself. It begins a time when the boxer believed his career was over due to his having broken his right hand. Needing to support his family, Braddock worked as a longshoreman but struggled to get enough shifts to put food on the table. Braddock eventually reconnects with his old manager Joe Gould (Giamatti) and ends up taking and winning a fill-in fight against a top-seeded contender.

While Braddock story has many general similarities with Rocky Balboa’s, it’s the details that distinguish their lives. Rocky was struggling before he got his big fight, but Braddock was near the end of his rope. In one heartbreaking scene, he is reduced to begging to get enough money to keep the heat on. It’s that unfiltered desperation makes Cinderella Man unique, affecting and unpopular. It’s also what makes Braddock’s eventual transcendence of his circumstances so powerful.