What a shameless crowd-pleaser It’s cookie-cutter stuff, some have said Seabiscuit meets Million Dollar Baby (I guess more a comment on the movie’s Oscar chances); I’d say Raging Bull meets Bound for Glory. Either way it’s barely anything we haven’t seen before, but Ron Howard has some serious skill in the director’s chair, Thomas Newman’s score is reliable, and Crowe, Giamatti and Zellwegger (a little off in places but good where it counts – I love the scene where she changes her mind about him taking the big fight and then tells him about it – “You’re the champion of my heart.”) work great together.

The Champ is still my personal favourite boxing movie (maybe because, if my memory serves me correctly, there’s not a lot of the sport in it, lol) ... but this one’s not too bad, I’d watch it again over Raging Bull or any of the Rocky movies, anyway. I only hope this isn’t all we’re gonna have for Oscars next year :-/ There again, at least it’s more worthy of nominations than Seabiscuit ...

This entry was posted on Friday, July 22nd, 2005 at 1:28 am in 4 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.