While sluggish in spots, Resurrecting the Champ is a sports/newsroom drama elevated by high-caliber performances by Samuel Jackson, Josh Hartnet, and Alan Alda.
While sluggish in spots, Resurrecting the Champ is a sports/newsroom drama elevated by high-caliber performances by Samuel Jackson, Josh Hartnet, and Alan Alda.
Director and co-screenwriter (along with Chris Gerolmo, Allison Burnett, and Michael Bortman) Rod Lurie tells the uplifting tale of a sports writer who almost lost it all before stumbling into the story of a lifetime in this uplifting sports-themed drama starring Josh Hartnett and Samuel L. Jackson. Erik (Hartnett) is a Denver-based sports writer whose prose is dull and whose marriage is failing. Not only is Erik having a difficult time dealing with his stubborn editor Metz (Alan Alda) - who
refuses to take the suffering scribe off of the boxing beat - but the pain of being separated from his young son has weighed heavier on Erik's conscience than he could have ever imagined. When Erik sees a local homeless man (Samuel L. Jackson) being violently assaulted by a gang of sadistic street toughs, he instinctively comes to the suffering man's rescue. As fate would have, Erik discovers that the nondescript homeless man is actually the former boxing champion Battling Bob Satterfield, whom many sports fans had assumed dead. Now driven to tell the story that may establish him as a successful sports writer, Erik gradually begins to make the transformation from ordinary man to extraordinary champion - largely by turning inward and by reexamining his relationship with his own son. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
Despite one great performance and an intriguing setup, the work is crippled by another performance that's nowhere near great, and a storyline that makes it impossible to root for the leading man.
The movie itself -- which deals (not very interestingly) with the issue of journalistic integrity and (very predictably) with father-son relationships -- doesn't pack much of a wallop.
While Resurrecting the Champ seems to be just what you expect, it's only when you've let your guard slip that you realize it's hiding something altogether more forceful in its glove.
Resurrecting the Champ is a movie I was going to recommend. It was contrived and dopey, but it seemed like pleasant entertainment. Then came the terrible last ten minutes when it casts itself on the rancid junk heap of hokum.
Pardon me for being offended when a flick revolving around the question of journalistic ethics takes so many liberties with the truth simply to spin a tall tale designed to tug on unsuspecting heartstrings.
Slow in the father-son heart to heart parts, Champ brings it all back home in the end with a great story line and saving performances by Jackson, Alda and Hatcher
Among the movies I've most wanted to see in the last few years, Resurrecting the Champ was a real letdown. The story is supposed to be about a journalist and a boxer, and yet - for some reason - the family story is pushed to the forefront. I don't care about the man's marriage, and I don't care about his son. Tell me
about the journalist and the boxer. Slow, melodramatic and cringe-worthy in places (double whammy: bad dialogue AND bad acting!), this film was not half as good as it could have been.
This film took me to unexpected places. I figured I was in for another formula fight film, but, in spite of an awesome performance from Jackson, the film isn't really about the ex boxer at all. The meat of the film is the resurrecion of the reporter, who is trying to live with the ghost of his famous father, as he
deals with not only that, but professional ethics. The film is just a bit ambiguous about how much due dillegence he put in (or should have), but when all signs were leading to gold, I can see where you wouldn't want to stop the speeding train to question certain aspects and coincidences a bit deeper. This story kept me in my seat and watching Jackson as the punch drunk "champ" was a wondrous view into method acting - all the little mannerisms and especially the somehow energetic shuffle that achingly told of a body that is simply unable to do and go where the brain tells it to.
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