Resurrecting the Champ: Movie Review

Like "Field Of Dreams" did with baseball, "Resurrecting the Champ" deals more with the delicate, almost fragile relationships between fathers and sons and less with the "Sweet Science" of boxing.

Josh Hartnett plays Erik Kernan, a dedicated sportswriter for the Denver Times and the son of a beloved sports commentator. Kernan works hard to live up to the family name, but his boss (Alan Alda) doesn't think his stories have enough heart in them and tends to bury them in the sports section of the paper.

Since he's separated from his wife (Kathryn Morris) Kernan also wants his son Teddy (Dakota Goyo) to think he's a big man in the sports world, so he tells him stories about playing golf with Muhammad Ali and his friendship with John Elway of the Denver Broncos, but there's little truth to these tales.

A chance encounter with a homeless man that people call "The Champ" (Samuel L. Jackson), however, leads Kernan to a career-making story. Although he's now the target of young bullies, the Champ claims to be Robert "Battlin' Bob" Satterfield, a boxing great from the 1950's who quiet;y vanished from the sport.

Using food and twenty dollar bills to entice him, Kernan interviews the Champ, who displays an uncanny ability to recall the most intimate and intricate details about his fights. He even shows Kernan a distinctive scar that his father gave him as a child, which happens to be quite visible on archive footage of a famous Satterfield fight.

Instead of pitching the idea to his unreceptive boss, he approaches the editor (David Paymer) of the new Denver Times Sunday Magazine. Kernan's story lands on the cover and he quickly becomes the golden boy of the sports world, even getting a shot at an on-air position at Showtime.

Unfortunately, some people, especially those who were around during the Satterfield era, start questioning the authenticity of the story and the Champ's claims. More often than not, Kernan hears that Satterfield died more than 20 years earlier. Even the "Raging Bull" himself Jake LaMotta, who fought Satterfield during his prime, has trouble believing that the boxer is still alive and kicking.