Film - A Depression-era hero strikes a blow for America's underdogs, writes John Lyttle Cinderella Man (12A)

The excuse - pardon me, reason - Universal Pictures proffered for the spectacular flop of Cinderella Man in the US is one of New Hollywood's hoariest: the marketing division screwed up. It seems that audiences didn't want to sit through a 145-minute, real-life, Depression-era boxing drama in a summer otherwise stocked with scatological comedy and sci-fi-cum-fantasy blockbusters, never mind industry chatter about "intuitive counter-programming". Which is not to say that this isn't the truth, as opposed to vainglorious PR. On the other hand, it might be that the Cinderella Man star Russell Crowe's high-profile anger management relapse - in the week of the film's release, he threw a telephone at a hotel receptionist - had a little more to do with it.

If Crowe had been playing just about any other pugilist, this might have helped at the box office. But there he was, all over US screens, impersonating "Gentleman" Jim Braddock, the arthritic has-been heavyweight whose rise, fall and comeback gave hope to a despairing proletariat during the darkest days of the early 1930s. Braddock is pretty much a secular saint, so Crowe's behaviour bordered on sacrilege. Cinderella Man hit the ropes, and never recovered.

Both the official and unofficial explanations have this in common: bad timing. If the studio had held Cinderella Man back Stateside to synchronise with its European debut early this month, the picture would have reaped the wild wind of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Katrina may be America's greatest natural disaster, but there is a case to be made for the Depression, not the 11 September 2001 attacks, being America's greatest man-made disaster. Scene after scene in Cinderella Man inadvertently vibrates with contemporary relevance, as though an invisible tornado had swept through period New York moments before the director Ron Howard shouted: "Action!"

As it turns out, Mother Nature and collapsed capitalism exercise much the same effect. When Braddock escorts his eldest son to the butcher's to return a stolen salami and lectures the boy about starvation being no excuse for thieving - the boy begs to differ - you can't not ponder the pros and cons of looting. When Renee Zellweger, playing Crowe's simple but terrifically annoying wife Mae, has the electricity and water cut off and stumbles outside to sob her shame, you can't not think about how the poor permanently struggle to exist in the world's richest nation. When the shanty town in Central Park is raided by police and Braddock's best friend (Paddy Considine) lies dying, you can't not dwell upon the citizens of New Orleans forced from their homes at gunpoint by the gung-ho forces of law and order. Back then, America's shanty towns were known as Hoovervilles. You wonder: will the modern-day equivalents be called Bush Camps?

This might sound like stretching a point. It isn't. Howard has already built a socio-political subtext into his film. The surprise of Cinderella Man is that it isn't actually a boxing epic, another reason why audiences baying for blood may have departed disappointed. The director's model isn't Raging Bull, or even Rocky. As the title hints, Cinderella Man is more a fairy tale, and one indebted to movies from the Depression era itself, inspirational classics such as Meet John Doe and Mr Deeds Goes to Town. You could call it It's a Wonderful Fight.

I mean this as a compliment, though most reviewers wouldn't. Today, Frank Capra's canon is ignorantly dismissed as sentimental, populist and soft. What is routinely forgotten is its subversion. Meet John Doe has the poor resisting the formation of a crypto-fascist movement. Mr Deeds Goes to Town pits the democratic individual against mass-media corruption. (Mr Deeds's tabloid nickname? "The Cinderella Man".) It's a Wonderful Life presciently warned of a small-town America enslaved by the banks and corporations, and encouraged the "little people" to revolt against the bottom line. Cinderella Man's subtext is echoingly similar. Here, the powers that be are indifferent to the plight of millions who have fallen off the social ladder. Braddock isn't just a working-class hero - he's a fist of fury. Every punch he lands is a blow for everyone's rights.

This makes Cinderella Man a great deal more profound (and pleasurable) than A Beautiful Mind, the last project Howard and Crowe collaborated on. That was an Oscar-winning prestige job about madness and mathematics, though the number it most indelibly reminded me of was number two. Cinderella Man is simpler. It says that if you're fed up with the way things work, fight, and that even the discarded deserve a second chance.

As if to illustrate the point, Universal has just announced that the film is to be given a limited re-release in the autumn. May I suggest that re-release be limited to Washington, where its message will do the most good? And that, until then, Russell Crowe be kept as far away from the world's bellboys and hall porters as possible?

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