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Resurrecting the Champ
EMAILPRINTYari Film Group Releasing

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 28 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 12 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by:
J.R. Moehringer (Los Angeles Times Magazine article)
Allison Burnett
Michael Bortman
Directed by: Rod Lurie
Release Date:
Theatrical: August 24, 2007
DVD: April 1, 2008
Running Time: 111 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for some violence and brief language
Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Josh Hartnett, Kathryn Morris, David Paymer, Teri Hatcher, Alan Alda, Harry J. Lennix, and Peter Coyote
One night after leaving the paper, sports reporter Erik Kernan sees a gang of thugs beating up a homeless man. He notices how well the grizzly old fellow can take a punch. He bobs, he weaves, he lands a few good ones himself until Erik chases the thugs away, who leave jeers of how they beat "The Champ" in their wake. Erik realizes he has just rescued the legendary "Battling Bob Satterfield" and stumbled on the story of a lifetime. Rumor had it that Satterfield was dead...and yet here he was. An article about the rise, fall, and resurrection of a former heavyweight contender could get Erik's career off the ropes and breathe life into his confidence. A story like this could be the title shot he has been waiting for; a chance to change his life forever. (Yari Film Group Releasing)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Deterrence The Contender The Last Castle
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Film Threat Zack Haddad
It is great to see a boxing movie that portrays both boxing and Jackson in different lights.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
It's the complexity of Lurie's moral universe that makes it linger in the mind.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
About a guy who stood on the brink of greatness but, because of one flaw he could never overcome, had to settle for being pretty good before he faded away. Strange, then, that the movie works exactly the same way.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Jackson disappears into his role, completely convincing, but then he usually is. What a fine actor. He avoids pitfalls like making Champ a maudlin tearjerker, looking for pity. He's realistic, even philosophical, about his life and what happened to him.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Treacle takes over in the last act, but most of this fact-based story by screenwriters Michael Bortman and Allison Burnett takes the inspirational sports drama into unexpected and morally complex territory.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Duane Byrge
Charged by a knock-out performance from Samuel L. Jackson, this compelling story of manly redemption will deliver a winning boxoffice combination of word of mouth and ultimately step outside the generic ring of sports lore.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
By skewing the film into a father-son inspirational saga, the filmmakers sell out the best possibilities in their material. Lurie clearly wants Resurrecting the Champ to be "more" than a sports movie, or a newspaper movie. Ironically, he ends up with less.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
It's more intelligent than most Hollywood movies you'll find in the heat of summer, and its saving grace is the quality of its acting, including Jackson's uncompromising turn as the old fighter, and delicious bits by David Paymer and Alan Alda as veteran editors.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson
The cast is generally excellent, but Hartnett in particular comes across as convincingly complicated, alternately reprehensible and sympathetic.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Jackson creates a searing study in reverse nobility as a character with a battered, street-poetic presence and subtle powers of sympathy that come into play even when he appears to be a rogue.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
The film is easy to take, though it must be said: It's almost 100 percent blather.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
This picture reminded me of one of the things I like best about "All the President’s Men": It doesn’t give a good godd--- about Woodward and Bernstein’s personal lives.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Struggles to get off the ropes and never quite establishes its rhythm. The film takes place in eternal moral twilight, dark enough to make faces look photogenically poignant, light enough to see the white lies.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Lurie's film never fully reconciles the story about newsroom ethics with the sentimental drama about bad dads and bereft sons.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
For Mr. Lurie, who specializes in political subjects, Resurrecting the Champ is an encouraging return to film following the rise and fall of his television series "Commander in Chief."
Read Full Review >Variety John Anderson
Overly sentimentalized and the execution is slack. If not for Samuel L. Jackson's performance as the ravaged boxer, "Champ" would be of limited interest.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust
Delivers a heckuva story marred by some credibility problems but lands the majority of its punches via subtly powerful performances and a moving undercard of paternal connection.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
The thoroughly unconvincing drama Resurrecting the Champ might be based on a true story, but that doesn't mean you're going to believe a single frame of it.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
If most boxing movies are about redemption, Resurrecting the Champ is a boxing movie that goes to exasperating lengths to redeem its boxing writer.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Robert Wilonsky
This isn't great raw material, though Lurie and his screenwriters try their best to portray Erik as some guilt-ridden evildoer who's perpetrated a great fraud.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
Hardly anything feels real, but what feels even more unreal is Hartnett with a cloying, sentimental, self-pitying performance. The liveliest thing in the film is the great Jackson, slumming again in a role miles beneath him.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Stays on its feet through all the rounds, but it never “floats like a butterfly.”
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joanne Kaufman
The movie itself -- which deals (not very interestingly) with the issue of journalistic integrity and (very predictably) with father-son relationships -- doesn't pack much of a wallop.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jason McBride
The relationship between reporter and subject is always a tricky one, but in Resurrecting the Champ it's downright delusional.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Clumsiness follows clumsiness -- the acting, the staging, the details of the plot -- until you reach the point of cool indifference. There's a lot more wrong here than can be corrected in a small space in the newspaper.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
The film itself is a tedious melodrama whose sole saving grace is the performance of Samuel L. Jackson as Tommy Kincaid.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
The gooey sanctity of the bond between fathers and sons all but nullify Jackson's zesty performance.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Well, it smells, all right, but authentic isn't the word I'd use for this maudlin male weepie, a compendium of the worst clichés of sports and journalism movies.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.4 (out of 10) based on 12 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
John gave it a7:
Hey Jared you ever see a movie called Pulp Fiction, because in my opinion Sammuel L. was pretty good in that. Just a thought. Oh and it's called a comma, try using it one day. If your going to give a movie a 3 ouf of 10 please come up with something better thatn "its not crap its just not very good" because if you give something 3 you are saying that it is crap.
Jay H. gave it a5:
Not too bad but I did find it rather boring. The acting is good, as is the story but I just never got involved in the film, it never drew me in. It lacks spunk.
Stephen D. gave it a9:
Will be a classic. A film which works on many levels. Jackson should win an Oscar.
Judy T gave it a7:
Good attempt but missed the mark for greatness. Samuel is good and Josh Hartnett tries, but in the end the writing lets them down as the two main characters are not well fleshed out. Pales in drama to "Shattered Glass".
Jeremy P. gave it a10:
Samuel L Jackson should win an Oscar for this role. His potrayal of the Champ is spot on and very authentic.
G. M. gave it a10:
Uplifting.
