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
On the surface Rod Lurie’s engaging new feature “Resurrecting the Champ” is the story of an over the hill punch drunk boxer who could have been the best but didn’t have the heart. Beneath the surface is the story of a dad who is the best already and simply hasn’t figured it out. The film is a tale of two falsehoods: two men not being honest with themselves or with the world. It is about truth and about the lies we tell ourselves and the lies we tell others. It is about the lies we tell to protect personas that, in the end, don’t matter anyway.
Josh Hartnett (“Lucky Number Slevin”) is young reporter Erik working for a moderate sized urban newspaper. Erik is a mediocre writer made worse by the fact that he is haunted by his famous father’s past as a locally famous radio sportscaster. Living with the fear that he will fail to fill his father’s shoes, Erik is even more fearful of losing the respect of his young son Teddy (Dakota Goyo). To prop up his image Erik exaggerates the truth a little bit when it comes to his famous sports star buddies. Punctuating this perceived crisis in Erik’s life is editor Metz, played with the perfect Perry White attitude by Alan Alda in several brief appearances that threaten to steal the show.
On his way home from work one day Erik runs into the Champ, played with gusto by Oscar nominee Samuel L. Jackson (“Star Wars,” Pulp Fiction,” “Shaft”). The Champ “cuda bin ah contendah” as the saying goes. In fact, he was a contender in a couple of his past lives. The Champ is happy enough where he is, in alleyways unsuccessfully fighting off his own bullies, but he still remembers the old days. In fact, he wants to share those memories with Erik, who is hungry for a big story.
Even under the heavy make-up and limited lines of the Champ, Samuel Jackson is fantastic. But he has the most fun part---the easiest part because it is the weirdest and most outrageous. Hartnett and Goyo have a much tougher assignment---to bring life to emotions with which we are all too familiar. They have an even harder row to hoe in making the film move in areas where the script is dreadfully slow. They don’t pull it off.
There is not a believable chemistry between father and son and Hartnett is not, yet, capable of being a believable troubled young man. He is too glib, even when he isn’t trying to be glib. In “Slevin” he was perfect as the feckless youngster who laughs at the world. As such, he set the audience up perfectly for his surprise persona as evil mastermind. But in this film, in spite of the best of tries by director Rod Lurie and screenwriters Michael Bortman and Allison Burnett, there is no surprise. At least there is no surprise on the part of Erik the insecure writer. As for the Champ that could have been---well, you will have to find that out by seeing the film.
Alda is superb as editor Metz and Kathryn Morris does fine as Erik’s estranged wife and troubling conscience. Terri Hatcher does a dynamite job as the dragon lady Flak (gotta love that name) trying to lure Erik to the high paid but phony glossy folds of a famous sports magazine. The storyline is great, with a fun twist at the end with hints of the gut-wrenching “Shattered Glass” story of doomed New Republic writer Stephan Glass. The screenplay moves along in the fast and funny parts but falls to mediocre when tackling the heavy lifting of painting a portrait of a father and son in crisis. In fairness, the latter is much more difficult than the former. Still, well worth watching and suitable entertainment for the entire family from teenagers on up.
Release: August 24, 2007
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