 Starring: Russell Crowe, Renee Zellweger, Paul Giamatti, Craig Bierko, Paddy Considine
Director: Ron Howard
Year Of Release: 2005
Plot: Based on a true story, Cinderella Man follows Jim Braddock, a former championship fighter whose career is on the slide, as he fights injured and scrimps and saves during the Great Depression. However Jim gets a second chance at boxing success and fights his way back to the top, to the point where he gets to take on the arrogant champ, Max Baer. |
How did Russell Crowe become an A-list, Oscar winning star? I genuinely mean that, as I truly don’t get it. With most famous actors, even if you don’t like them, you can understand why they might appeal to other people, but with Crowe I just don’t get the appeal.
I wish I could remember who was the first one to say it (I wish it was me, but it wasn’t), but Crowe doesn’t look like a movie star. He looks like one of your dad’s mates who drives a forklift truck for a living. That would be fine is he were an amazing actor, but in my opinion he isn’t.
It strikes me that he’s made an entire career out of playing not very likable characters who are either just grumpy or introverted, and occasionally both. In most of his roles he seems to substitute actual acting for mumbling, which then gets mistaken for intensity. Take Gladiator for example, sure his wife and kid got killed in the film, which would make a lot of people more than a little fed up, but he basically spends the entire film just being grumpy and angry.
There are no shades of anger or complex acting to convey the intricacies of the situation, he just spends three hours being pissed off and killing people (and tigers). Although I really, really don’t like Gladiator, Crowe got praised to the hilt for the movie and won an Oscar, but the truth is he doesn’t actually do all that much with the character other than be grumpy. The power (such as there is) comes from the situation, not in how he portrays it. It’s no coincidence that the most famous quote from the film is, “My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next” – which can be translated to “Hi, my name’s Max and I’m pissed off” – because that’s all Crowe does in the film.
It’s similar in LA Confidential. It’s a great flick but once more Crowe’s main job in it is to be grumpy. He got praised and hit the A-list because of the movie, but while it’s a fascinating character, it’s the character that’s interesting, not Crowe, who just barges his way through the film in full-on unlikable, grumpy, mumbly fashion – it’s okay, but it’s the role that’s good, not him in it. Since then there’s also been the likes of 3:10 To Yuma and American Gangster, where he again was mainly just a bit angry. I think the attraction is that the grumpiness is meant to make him look wounded, but it always comes across to me like his characters are just unlikeable asses.
Then there’s A Beautiful Mind. It’s another movie I really don’t like (I seem to particularly object to Russell Crowe films that win the Best Picture Oscar, but never mind). Here Crowe gets to be introverted, but it’s basically the same performance he gave in Gladiator and LA Confidential, but because he wears old fashioned glasses and talks about maths, he comes across as kooky and reserved instead of grumpy. However he still doesn’t manage to make John Nash very likable.
To give him his dues though, there is once Crowe performance I think is excellent, which is in 1999’s The Insider (which is particularly strange seeing as I’m not normally a big fan of Michael Mann movies). He is still slightly unlikeable as whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand, but it’s a wonderfully studied performance and brilliantly nuanced. It so good it’s almost annoying, because ever since then I’ve wanted that Russell Crowe back, but instead we get one who looks like he could be really good if he tried, but knows he can get away with coasting his way through and being grumpy (I’m sure he puts in a lot of effort, but it doesn’t look like it).
At the beginning of this article, I said I didn’t know why he appealed to people, but writing this I think I’ve worked it out. It’s because while I genuinely don’t think he’s as good an actor as he’s given credit for, what he is good at doing is making it seem as if there’s something going on under the surface that might explode at any moment. However it’s a fairly limited talent, as while initially it makes it seem as if his characters are genuinely interesting, you quickly realise it’s almost a trick and there aren’t endless layers to the people he plays, it’s just that even when he’s asking if anyone wants a cup of tea, he always seems like he’s trying to hold himself back from throwing a telephone at somebody. It’s one of the reasons A Good Year is such as mess, because you’re half expecting him to go mental at any moment, when he’s meant to just be having a nice time in Provence.
Maybe I’m wrong and Crowe is a master of acting and deservedly a major star, but I just don’t see it. Perhaps in a warehouse somewhere there’s someone who looks like Johnny Depp and has the talent of De Niro wondering why he ended up driving a forklift for a living, not realising it’s because Crowe made some sort of Faustian pact to replace him as a Hollywood star. It certainly wouldn’t shock me.
TIM ISAAC
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