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Resurrecting the Champ

Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

Resurrecting the Champ is a movie that has a lot on its mind: journalistic responsibility, faded celebrity, and the bond between fathers and sons, just to name a few themes. That its able to put the pieces together in such a well-structured way makes it an uncommonly thoughtful movie, and one worth seeing.

Erik Kernan (Josh Hartnett), a reporter at the Denver Times, is a mediocre sportswriter. He files story after story, but never gets to cover anything big because according to his editor Metz (Alan Alda), his stories are "a lot of typing - not much writing." He's also, for all intents and purposes, a hustler: he steals phrases from his famous dead father's boxing radio commentaries to use in his stories, he tells his son that he's friends with all the famous athletes he writes about, and he's constantly trying to find an in with his estranged wife (Kathryn Morris), who also works at the paper. He manages to fast-talk his way to an interview with the newspaper's magazine section, but when asked to pitch a story, he's got nothing until he remembers the Champ.

The Champ (Samuel L. Jackson) is what the old homeless man near Erik's apartment calls himself. He told Erik one time that he used to be a boxer named Bob Satterfield, and maybe Erik can do a story about "the rise, fall, and resurrection" of the former heavyweight contender who everyone thought was dead. The suits (represented by David Paymer) buy Erik's pitch. I think I smell a perfect line for the trailer...yep, there it is: "This article is my title shot!" Erik exclaims to his wife.

Right off the bat, neither the screenwriters nor Hartnett are worried about making Erik especially likable; he's earnest, yeah, and he wants his son to be proud of him, sure, but he'll advance his career no matter what, talent be darned. The characterization might turn people off from the film, but I admired it; like Erik, everyone in the film seems to be playing a real person, more or less, not some kind of fantasy Hollywood character.

That goes for Jackson, too. His Champ is obviously the most showy role in the film, and if it was overacted the results would be disastrous, but Jackson finds just the right note through the character's mood swings, high voice, and mud-caked wild hair. Much of the middle of the film shows Erik's ongoing interviews with Champ, and the results are effortlessly watchable. Hartnett is often accused in reviews of being bland, but the hidden desperation he imbues his character with, coupled with Jackson's monologues about his past life as a boxer, strikes a good dynamic. In real life I could care less about boxing as a sport, but their conversations use the ...