Resurrecting the Champ (2007)
Directed by Rod Lurie
Written by Allison Burnett
Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Josh Hartnett, Kathryn Morris, Alan Alda, Rachel Nichols
Release Date August 24th, 2007
Published August 23rd, 2007
Josh Hartnett is a young actor who I have really come to enjoy. His work is always complex and never predictable. His performances in Lucky Number Slevin, The Black Dahlia and Mozart & The Whale are three of the best performances by any actor in the last two years. Each has a different tone, a different approach and requires different skills and yet Hartnett nails each one.
For his latest film Resurrecting The Champ, Hartnett outclasses the material which takes a compelling true story and fouls it up with false subplots and an ending far too neat and tidy to be believed.
Resurrecting The Champ is loosely based on a story by L.A Times writer J.R Moehringer. The story of an old homeless man who claimed he was once a heavyweight boxing contender. His stories about Rocky Marciano and Jake LaMotta and Floyd Patterson held Moehringer in sway for weeks but in researching this compelling fellow, Moehringer discovered a secret that changed the story from one of redemption to one of grand delusions and good intentions.
The movie Resurrecting The Champ casts Josh Hartnett in the role of Erik Kernan, a struggling boxing beat writer for a fake Denver newspaper, The Denver Times. His boss (Alan Alda) feels his writing lacks personality and buries most of his stories. Kernan's wife, Joyce, also a journalist, has kicked him out of the house for reasons that are only moderately clear.
Kernan lives in the shadow of his father, a legendary boxing announcer who abandoned him and his mother when Erik was only 6 years old. He is at the bottom of his self loathing, daddy blaming rope when he stumbles across the champ (Samuel L. Jackson). Claiming to be Bombing Bob Satterfield a one time contender for boxing's world heavyweight championship, the champ as those on the street call him, is now living next to a dumpster behind the Denver sports arena.
Sensing a heart rending sports story that could save his career, Erik implores the champ to tell him his life story and how he went from nearly fighting for the title to being homeless in Denver. His stories about breaking Rocky Marciano's nose and falling to Pretty Boy Floyd are compelling and Erik is at rapt attention. However, the champ has a secret that threatens to take both of them back down to the gutters.
Resurrecting The Champ is a project 10 years in the making. Producer Mike Medavoy bought the rights to J.R Moehringer's LA Times Magazine story not long after it was published in 1997. The film passed between a number of talents, including Morgan Freeman who was once set to play the champ. Finally, producer Bob Yari and director Rob Lurie managed to land Sam Jackson and Josh Hartnett for the leads and Medavoy's Phoenix Pictures finally gave the go ahead.
Jackson and Hartnett are terrific casting. Though Jackson has struggled recently, allowing his bad ass reputation to become something of a caricature, he redeems himself with an immersive performance as the champ. Josh Hartnett continues a series of tremendous performances with complex turns as a feckless self aggrandizer who is forced to confront the emptiness of his own life opposite the life of the champ who despite his circumstances, seems to want for nothing.
The script by Michael Bortman and Allison Burnett mirrors in many ways Stephen Ray's Shattered Glass. Both films are about journalists who find themselves overwhelmed by their own ambition. Shattered Glass is more accomplished, but Resurrecting The Champ benefits from a cast that elevates similar material. Both films are insightful about the pressures of the world of journalism through Glass again has the advantage with a cleaner, linear narrative.
Resurrecting The Champ tries a little too hard to cover a number of complex issues. As if the central story of this homeless fighter and the opportunistic journalist weren't enough, the film ladles on a backstory for each character about fathers and sons and the lengths one goes to be a good father or to avoid becoming a bad father. It's not that this fathers and sons subplot is poorly played, rather just that it distracts from the more interesting world of journalism and this dynamic relationship between the champ and the journalist.
Regardless of some aching narrative problems, including an ending that is far too easily tied up in a pretty bow, Resurrecting The Champ is a compelling character study. Watching Samuel L. Jackson return to form by becoming 'the champ', you are reminded of what a great talent Jackson is when given a good character to play.
His work in Resurrecting The Champ alongside Josh Hartnett is so good that you can't help but get caught up rooting for both characters even as they fail and reveal their flaws. The champ is something of an innocent, having spent much of his later years punch drunk from years in the ring, he is easy to sympathize with to a point.
Josh Hartnett has the more difficult character. His Erik Kernan is feckless, self loathing and a little lazy. When confronted about his writing early in the film we are told he really isn't very good. His own wife evinces only disappointment when she looks at him. Worst of all, Erik feels compelled to lie about his life to his six year old son leading to a scene with former Broncos quarterback John Elway that is painful and embarrassing in very real ways.
Hartnett's job is to somehow bring us to care about this guy and root for his redemption and he succeeds with an earnest come to Jesus series of epiphanies about his life that had me riveted. His character is, unfortunately, undermined late in the film by an ending that rushes past some of his more emotional moments, on its way to a too tidy ending, but Hartnett throughout remains a compelling presence.
Resurrecting The Champ is something of a disappointment in the end. The film aches to be deeper than it is and more complex than it needs to be. The story wraps up too quickly and too neatly. Still, Samuel L. Jackson and Josh Hartnett make a great team and they elevate the material to the point that their work together is worth the price of admission even if the movie itself does not hold up to much inspection.
