It’s obviously ravenous for Oscars, and it’s obviously a Ron Howard movie. And Renée Zellweger produces one of her worst shamelessly squeaky ‘performances’. Can this person act in anything? Rhetorical question alert. She’s an utter pain in everything, a desperate, squishy, attention-seeking pain.
Fortunately, Ms. Painweger doesn’t sink the movie, which is as formulaic as they come but not without merit. The boxing stuff is fabulous, not exactly Raging Bull (1980), but what could be? Only an 18 certificate and Martin Scorsese are capable of somehow transforming the brutality of the sport into impressionist art.
The Great Depression stuff is the main draw, and it’s fucking depressing. Economic meltdown. People turning on people. Ordinarily respectable folk resorting to crime. The themes are contentious: put everything into land or brick and mortar. Money is illusory. And no one knows anything.
Something like that.
