Some films are fated to accomplish greatness by just being their natural self. "Cinderella Man" is one such rarity.

It doesn't try to be a profound or dramatic biographical epic about real life boxer Jim Braddock. It just lets the character grow naturally until we're looking, not at one of Hollywood's most accomplished actors playing Braddock, but at Braddock himself coming alive, claiming our attention in ways that are exceptionally endearing and moving.

Set during the Great Depression in America, the film is anything but depressing. Check out the sequence where Braddock, out of favour as a boxer and on the brink of bankruptcy, goes to a posh sports club to beg for a relatively small sum of money so his children aren't sent away to a welfare home.

Here the magic of cinema, fully functional in every frame, is alchemised in the magic of the human condition as depicted by actors who forget to act.

A sequence such as the above is rare for its sublime sentimentality as well as the tonal control. Cinematographer Salvatore Totino penetrates into dark rooms as though they are wombs. Hence, a minor masterpiece is born.

This isn't the first time that director Ron Howard has collaborated with the astonishingly self-effacing Russell Crowe for a biographical epic (they did a far superior job of it in "A Beautiful Mind"). Nor is this the first film chronicling the rise fall and rise of a boxer.

Martin Scorcese's "Raging Bull" where Robert de Niro played a real-life boxing champ clamped its narrative tentacles on audiences. The approach in "Cinderella Man" is far gentler, and hence far more persuasive.

You cannot escape the benign ambience that Howard creates around the family and professional life of the protagonist. Some cinematic clichés (why does the hero's adversary in the boxing ring have to be mean and sadistic?) seep into the sublime story, but cause no damage to its inviolable mood of temperate storytelling.

If a lot of the moments between Braddock and his devoted wife come alive it's not just because the director knows how to hold an emotion in place. It's also to do with the unstated emotions between Russell Crowe and Rene Zelleweger.

The two are so skilled as husband and wife you wonder if they played the same roles in some other life without the camera switched on!

Not surprisingly it's the domestic scenes which transmit a brilliantly burnished energy. Scenes at the dining table with the kids barely getting enough to eat are food to your soul. Such sequences wrench your heart.

Yes, this is cinema so pure, direct and simple, you begin to doubt its raison d'etre.

Why another boxing film so soon after Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby"? For the answer to that, just peep into Russell Crowe's eyes where you see a whole ethos and era of emotions conveying feelings that go way beyond the boxing arena.

Even though the boxing sequences are deftly performed, you keenly observe Braddock's conduct out of the ring, with his wife and children and with his supportive agent (Paul Giamatti).

By the end of the beautifully crafted tale, you aren't really looking at the predictable victory in the ring. Your eyes are set much beyond the visuals looking at lives that rise above their fate to claim a grace and dignity that cinema offers to those who have the vision.

"Cinderella Man" has it in abundance.