Resurrecting the Champ

I was very excited to see this movie. I absolutely adore Samuel L. Jackson and when I looked at the rest of the cast, Josh Hartnett, Alan Alda, David Paymer and Peter Coyote (to name just a few), I figured this movie had to be gem. I was wrong. This movie wasn’t bad; but it certainly disappointed me. This cast deserved better than a movie with a “Made for TV” feel.

In Resurrecting the Champ we meet Erik (Josh Harnett) who is a mid-level sports writer desperately trying to break into the big leagues and distinguish himself from his sports personality father. After a boxing match, he finds a man calling himself “Champ” (Samuel L. Jackson) living in an alley near the arena. He remembers Champ when he is asked to pitch ideas to a potential employer, the Sunday Magazine editor of the newspaper for which Erik currently works. The magazine editor, who was not crazy about Erik’s previous work, finally shows some interest.

Erik spends days interviewing the homeless man, a former heavy-weight boxer named Battling Bob. In the first of the film’s many clichés, Erik finds in Champ a friend and surrogate father figure. The theme of fathers and sons runs throughout the movie. You get glimpses of the relationship between Erik and his father, Erik and his son, Champ and his father, Champ and his son (should I go on?). None of the relationships are really developed, but the director, Rod Lurie, keeps hitting you with the theme.

The magazine piece about Champ becomes a huge success and catapults Erik into the upper reaches of a career in sports journalism. Until he discovers Champ is a fraud. He’s not Battling Bob, he’s another boxer who has been impersonating Bob for years. The true nature of identity is the only really interesting question the film raised. If you spend years truly BEING another person, does your own identity fade/meld with the forged self? Unfortunately, this theme was not explored in the movie.

In the end, Erik loses the material things in life, but gains a more genuine relationship with his son (yawn) and Champ dies alone in an alley, the victim of random violence. If you didn’t see those two events coming, you weren’t paying attention.

I give Resurrecting the Champ three stars. It wasn’t a terrible, movie, but it was long and ponderous with no surprises. With this stellar cast, there should have been a much bigger punch (pun intended).

Michelle D. Kieffaber