'Champ' acting

By Dan Moore

Published Aug. 28, 2007

"Resurrecting the Champ" is a boxing movie about a boxing journalist, and any story about a journalist probably has a peculiarly sympathetic audience in Columbia, home of — and I'm just repeating what my journalism teachers told me, loudly and often — the greatest journalism school on earth. When others fancied themselves the next Michael Jordan, I like to imagine my classmates saw their future selves as Robert Redford in rolled-up dress sleeves, typing furiously at their Selectrics and slamming phones in a smoky newsroom.

Erik Kernan (Josh Hartnett) is living a low-rent version of that dream, such as it is, when he comes upon a homeless ex-boxer, played in Lon Chaney makeup by Samuel L. Jackson, with an incredible story of near-fame and loss. Kernan interviews the man, who says he's former championship contender Bob Satterfield, and his story is so compelling that, upon publication, it vaults our journalist-hero into Pulitzer contention overnight. Unfortunately for our journalist-hero, it's not true, and the rest of the movie is less "All the President's Men" and more an unwitting retelling of "Shattered Glass."

Director Rod Lurie films Kernan's rise and fall with an eye for stray details, lingering over scenes that are irrelevant to the film but crucial to its players. The boxer's flashbacks are, in an intriguing twist, oversaturated with color and directed more vividly than the movie proper; to this broken down prizefighter, these stray memories are more vital and meaningful than his everyday life, and Lurie expertly expresses that with the camera.

The character actors, particularly Peter Coyote as an ancient trainer, luxuriate in Lurie's seemingly insignificant details. We come into scenes a little early and leave them a little late, so that the characters seem less like actors on a stage and more like real people. As the caring-but-careless journalist, Hartnett gives the impression of someone used to shifting effortlessly between meaningless charm and earnest befuddlement, whose transmission has begun slipping gears.

When the former boxer is revealed to be a fraud who's been impersonating Satterfield ever since he lost to him some 50 years ago, Kernan realizes he's been impersonating the kind of sportswriter he wishes he were to impress his son, who is fully convinced that his lowly beat-writing dad is best friends with John Elway. The boxer, meanwhile, explains that he kept up his Satterfield charade to impress his son, who eventually found him out. There's enough Spielberg-ian missing father drama to necessitate some kind of flowchart, but it's well handled, and it adds some tension and life to what could otherwise have been a rote retelling of the disgraced-journalist tale.

The hero of "Resurrecting the Champ" works hard and makes some mistakes, which is a pretty good way to describe the movie itself. It might not be a triumph of filmmaking and plotting, but it succeeds thanks to some impressive performances and a human understanding of failure and imperfection. Which is more than I can say for movie-Woodward-and-Bernstein.