Highly Recommended. Definitely the new Rocky of the millennium. Fabulous pro-family movie about blue collar boxing hero, James Braddock, who, during the Great Depression, became an inspiration for all normal Americans struggling to make it through hard times. This movie was so mesmerizing, I didn’t take any notes, cause I was so caught up into it. What is so fabulous about it is on a mythological level. This movie exalts family as a source of hope, inspiration and meaning. Braddock loves his wife more than anything in the world, his wife even teases him about all the women oogling him at the ring, and it’s all just a joke to him. I mean, I haven’t seen marriage exalted with such beauty since Jerry McGuire. It wasn’t just that marriage was good, here, it’s that marriage was the best way to live, and superior to the fast living fornicating superstar life style of Braddock’s ultimate nemesis at the end. Braddock is a man who most today would not begin to understand. He tells his son to return a sausage he stole in the midst of the Depression. He lowers himself to receive welfare and even beg from the rich boxing promoters in order to keep his children from being sent away to family. And then he returns the money to the government when he takes home a big purse!! He doesn’t swear or even react to provocation by his enemy. He remains respectful and a gentleman to the end. He is a man of grace. This guy has so much integrity, most Christians couldn’t even keep up with him. One complaint I would have about the movie is the boxing itself. That is, boxing seems to me to be a morally illegitimate sport. It is not that men CAN get hurt, as in most sports, it is that it is a sport whose very premise is to hurt people. For this reason, I consider it founded on violence, rather than the violence being a side issue, as in hockey. Hockey could be played with more civility and without fighting and it would still be a good and entertaining sport. But in boxing, taking away the violence is the elimination of the sport itself. So, its likeness to gladiatorial games is one of degree rather than essence.
