It was writer Damon Runyon who gave the Depression-era boxer James J. Braddock the nickname "Cinderella Man." A once-promising fighter whose career went into decline around the same time that the stock market did, Braddock wasn't supposed to go to the ball. But he did just that, pulling off one against-the-odds upset after another until, in June 1935, he found himself a contender for the heavyweight championship of the world.

Like its everyman hero, Cinderella Man pulls off its own against-the-odds victory, delivering the kind of fairy-tale ending- highly improbable, deeply satisfying-that was standard fare during the Hollywood studio era. Between them, director Ron Howard and screenwriters Cliff Hollingsworth and Akiva Goldman have made what amounts to a Frank Capra movie, the story of a decent man who loves his wife and kids, works hard, fights fair, keeps his promises and, in the end, finishes not last but first.

Yet what makes Cinderella Man so satisfying isn't its sentimentality, but its command of old-fashioned Hollywood craft. The film boasts solid storytelling and crisp dialogue; period set design and cinematography (while shot in color, Cinderella Man is so subdued of palette that it often feels like a black-and-white movie); and, most thrilling of all, old-fashioned movie star chemistry. Not only is Russell Crowe a classic movie star, and one with the physical presence to play a prizefighter, he's also a first-rate actor as capable of showing us victory and defeat outside the ring as he is inside it.

The ads for Cinderella Man feature Crowe and Ren??e Zellweger (who plays Braddock's wife, Mae) locked in a tight clinch, but the real chemistry in this movie is between Crowe and the wondrous Paul Giamatti, who plays Joe Gould, Braddock's manager and feisty, unrelenting fairy godmother. Zellweger, herself no slouch when it comes to feisty, makes the role of devoted wife and mother that of an equal partner. But it's Crowe and Giamatti, both so swift on their feet, who make this fairy tale not only credible, but compelling. That partnership continues into the ring, where Giamatti's vivid play-by-play narration elucidates the action for us and conveys its emotion.

The emotions found in Cinderella Man are, like the values of its director, deliberately straightforward and simple. Thus, they're a stark contrast to the dense tangle of dark feeling that animates another boxing film inspired by a real-life fighter, Martin Scorsese's masterpiece, Raging Bull. The same is true for Clint Eastwood's equally well-regarded Million Dollar Baby. "This time, I know what I'm fighting for," Braddock tells reporters as he prepares for the biggest bout of his career, but Raging Bull's Jake La Motta could no more name the demons he fought than he could hope to defeat them. Likewise, Eastwood's Frankie Dunn knew that even the most worthy hero could be felled in an instant by a swift sucker punch from fate.

In such heavyweight company, Howard may feel a little like Braddock, an uncomplicated man who's been written off by skeptical critics (sometimes deservedly so), but who's beloved by the public. Yet if we want our films to tell us hard truths about just how tough a fight life can be, we also want them to hold out the possibility of heroism and simple decency, especially when we fall short of those things ourselves. In Cinderella Man, Howard has found the perfect match between his talents and the kind of tale he tells best: that sometimes it's a wonderful life after all.