The Kansas City Star - Crowe's knockout performance Oscar worthy

 

ROBERT W. BUTLER

 

Dear Russell Crowe:

 

All is forgiven. Please pick up your next Oscar at the courtesy counter.

 

Think I'm being premature? After all, you say it's only June, and we have seven more months of films before Hollywood picks Academy Award nominees.

 

Well, go out and see “Cinderella Man” when it opens on Friday and then tell me whether Russell Crowe's performance as Depression-era heavyweight fighter James Braddock isn't the stuff of Oscar. Not only is it superb acting, it's as awesome a demonstration of pure star power as I've ever seen. Crowe has made a simple character memorable through melding with his essential screen persona.

 

I cannot name another actor of Crowe's generation who could have pulled this off.

 

Playing Braddock was a huge challenge because the guy was decency personified — family man, devoted husband, a regular Boy Scout. But qualities we look for in a spouse or neighbor are a handicap in the world of film drama, where rough edges make the man.

 

Only Crowe, with his physical force and keen grasp of character, has the package to make Braddock's goodness seem vitally important instead of irritating.

 

Here's an actor whose career has been thick with characters pushed to extremes now playing a guy who, aside from his profession, is normal. And triumphant in the process.

 

Mark my words … when the Russell Crowe story is written many years from now, “Cinderella Man” will be a turning point. Because not only will it earn Crowe his second Oscar (the first was for “Gladiator,” although in a just world he should have one for “The Insider”), it will mark the moment at which the movie-going public stopped looking at the actor one way and began to see him in a whole new light.

 

Be honest. Quite aside from his acting chops, one of the reasons we like Russell Crowe is that he's a bit of an animal. He's a drinker and a brawler, and one suspects he likes sex. A lot.

 

That same machismo has often gotten the New Zealand native in trouble. In fact, it cost him the Oscar for “A Beautiful Mind.” After he physically assaulted a TV director who had the temerity to trim Crowe's acceptance speech at the 2001 BAFTA ceremony (the Brit version of the Oscars), the actor's stock briefly plummeted in Hollywood. Widely believed to be the front runner in the best actor race, he lost to Denzel Washington (“Training Day”). You'll never convince me that denying Crowe the Oscar wasn't the industry's way of telling him to watch his behavior.

 

But since then Crowe has married, become a father and apparently reined in his behavior. It has been almost a year since The Star has run a story about some alleged misbehavior by the actor. In January the gossipmongers were reduced to spreading a tale of how the star couldn't assemble an Ikea crib for his new baby.

 

Russell Crowe is becoming Tom Hanks.

 

No, seriously. The one-time bad boy is at the stage where he can now go after — and get — the decent man-next-door roles. He still has that rough-hewn erotic allure, but “Cinderella Man” shows that he can put it on the back burner and concentrate on his Every Man side.