Resurrecting the Champ

[rating:4]
Director: Rod Lurie
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Josh Hartnett, Kathryn Morris, Alan Alda

“A writer, like a boxer, must stand alone.” As an opening line, this portends seriously turgid melodrama. Also, it makes you want to point out that a writer is punched in the head until his brains are mushy paste only in the metaphorical sense. Fortunately, Resurrecting the Champ is neither turgid nor melodramatic. In fact, Rod Lurie’s new film is seriously good stuff.

The acting fuels Resurrecting the Champ. Samuel L. Jackson loses himself in the role of a homeless ex-boxer—and Samuel L. Jackson is not easy to lose. Under makeup that increases his age and gives him the scars of a rugged ring career, Jackson affects a high, reedy voice that has none of the comical, authoritative swagger that he trademarked in Pulp Fiction. Jackson the serious actor is an even more rewarding presence than Jackson the star.

And Josh Hartnett—he’s more than a poster boy for poster boys. This role plays to his pretty-boy squint, but he brings more than just hunky silences as a beleaguered reporter trying to save his career, hoping to save his failed marriage and trying to be a hero to his son.

Even the kid who plays his son is good and authentic. Most kid actors are pretty crappy, either wooden or hammy, and you just have to get past that ’cause, hell, they’re kids. But young Dakota Goyo offers a really lovely, real performance as young Teddy, whose hero of a father turns out less heroic as the film rolls on.

I suspect the pleasure of the performances in this film comes largely to the director. I base this not just on the lead performances and the kid, but Alan Alda’s world-weary sports editor, Kathryn Morris‘ conflicted ex-wife, and even by Teri Hatcher in a turn as a cynical Hollywood operator (she does “cynical lush” well). Lurie seems to get the most out of all his actors, and make the most of their work. Hatcher’s small part, for instance, calls for her to chew the scenery a little, but her performance is grounded enough, and the film restrained enough, to make her bit useful rather than broad comic relief.

The story follows a journalist who discovers a broken-down boxer living on the streets of Denver and writes a great magazine article about him. The film lays out a pretty basic setup that seems really familiar: Reporter Erik Kernan is failing at his job, and his wife has left him. When he meets the down-and-out boxer, he sees a chance to redeem himself on all fronts. “This is my shot at the title,” he tells the homeless man, pleading for an interview. Along the way, he picks up a plucky and beautiful young assistant (Rachel Nichols) who believes in him and clearly thinks he’s a squinty hunk. Once all these pieces are in place, you settle into your chair and wait for the swell of orchestra music, due in about another hour, to tell you it’s time to cry tears of heartfelt joy.

Only the film decides to float like a butterfly, rather than sting like a bee. A key surprise twist lurches the story in another direction, and there are smaller deviations from the norm. Not all of them are good: We never get a clear idea of why Hartnet and his wife have split, a romantic subplot simply vanishes without resolution, and aspects of the on-the-job controversy Hartnett faces in the latter part of the film don’t seem to have been thought through. Also, the film’s third-act lurch, and the seeds to unraveling it, are dependent on an amazing coincidence—only one videotape seems to exist of Jackson boxing in his youth, and only that tape could’ve gotten Hartnett into trouble and also helped him figure out the truth. But these are minor quibbles in an excellent piece of work. An observation from the screening: There are flashes of violence in the film that really moved the audience, made them gasp, even though they’re so mild. That’s because the audience, jaded though it is by routine exposure to intense brutality, is so invested in these characters and the reality of them.

The film becomes about fathers and sons, looking at Hartnett’s relationship to his boy and to his late father, Jackson’s relationship to his kid. Yet it doesn’t hit you over the head with that. Hartnett struggles with his career, with the loss of a father he never knew, with his separation from his wife, and the common thread emerges slowly, in an unforced way that doesn’t feel as though the writing had been carefully tailored to it all along. The film feels loose, thematically, dancing around its ring with the occasional feint and dodge. That makes it feel not sloppy, but like an authentic slice of life.

Tags: drama, samuel l. jackson