This sappy 'Champ' is no knockout
"Resurrecting the Champ"
1½ stars
out of four
Opens today
Starring As
Josh Hartnett Erik
Samuel L. Jackson The Champ
Kathryn Morris Joyce
Alan Alda Metz
Written by Michael Bortman and Allison Burnett. Produced by Mike Medavoy, Bob Yari, Rod Lurie and Marc Frydman. Directed by Rod Lurie. A Yari Film Group release. Rated R (language). Running time: 114 minutes.
Rod Lurie's soppy, sentimental "Resurrecting the Champ" goes down for the count as a study in journalistic ethics and proper parenting skills.
It argues, not all that convincingly, that a sports reporter, being merely human, should be forgiven for completely misrepresenting a legendary boxing figure, providing that the reporter only did it to impress his young son, boost his own sagging sense of self-worth and get a shot at the Pulitzer Prize.
What????
Josh Hartnett plays a bland Denver Times sports reporter named Erik, stuck in the shadow of his legendary sports columnist daddy. Erik's editor, Metz (Alan Alda), says when it comes to Erik's impressive output, he's like a machine.
"With all the style of one, too," Metz says. "A lot of typing. Not much writing!"
Erik still hangs around his dishy divorced wife Joyce (Kathryn Morris) and talks about being a worthy father to his boy Teddy (Dakota Goyo). Erik has told Teddy all sorts of lies about meeting and hanging out with celebrities, just so the lad will think his dad is something special.
One night, Erik gets a chance at being special when he rescues a wheezing homeless man from a group of youthful street thugs. The man professes to be a former boxing champion named Satterfield (Samuel L. Jackson, emanating dazed conviction and boxer-like egotistical bombast). But how did the Champ wind up on the streets of Denver?
Erik senses a story.
"This article is my title shot!" he shouts.
The Champ's emotional, twisted journey proves to be so good that not even Erik's machined prose can blunt it.
Job offers pour in overnight, including a lucrative reporting gig on Showtime, where a hot producer ("Desperate Housewives" star Teri Hatcher) expects extra deeds as well as words from the handsome Erik.
Finally, Erik's ship has come in. But as anyone who has seen the trailers or TV commercials for "Resurrecting the Champ" knows, that ship has a big hole in it.
The vessel to stardom starts sinking fast when it appears that Erik didn't confirm the information being passed on by the Champ in his entertaining, guileless manner.
"Resurrecting the Champ" goes to great lengths to explain how Erik's desire to be a heroic father -- and not so much his deficient reporting skills -- leads to his demise.
It's a shaky premise at best, and Lurie, a former L.A. film critic who directed the punchy 2000 political drama "The Contender," pulls his dramatic punches by trying to champion a wimpy and unheroic hero, then wrapping up his film with a quick, forced ending that feels as phony as Erik's story.
The only champ in this movie is Jackson, who acquits himself nicely with a memorable performance brimming with the deft integrity that eludes Hartnett's Erik.
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