Resurrecting the Champ tells the tale of a boxer gone homeless and the reporter telling the story to the world. Did you know there is only one letter difference between boxing and boring?
Dull writer Erik (Josh Hartnett) accidently finds Champ (Samuel L. Jackson) when he is being beaten up by some young men in an alley. Erick’s marriage is falling apart, he lies to his son about his friend and can’t write an article with heart to save his live.
Director Rod Lurie couldn’t make a movie with heart either. I spent the majority of this movie trying to find one reason to care for any of the characters. Erick, the writer, couldn’t be more uninteresting if he were a rice cake. He has the personality and haircut of a wet mop. His story is as engaging as grandpa’s story about his ten year battle with bunions. Champ isn’t any more captivating than Erik. He is a boxer who’s soul fire burned as brightly as his as a blown out candle. His story was as pedestrian as a person in a cross walk.
Lurie and writers Michael Bortman and Allison Burnett should be ashamed of the film they created. I am a firm believer that one should stay to the end of a movie because often the end is redemptive of the movie but I could barely keep myself in my seat during the movie. I was squirming, rustling, and literally hitting myself in the face with my pen to keep myself awake. I chugged the coffee I had brought in hopes of keeping myself awake. I thought about swimming in a sea of espresso naked with paper cuts all over my body, in hopes it would keep me from slumber. I had the guy sitting next to me, who was a stranger, pinching me through the movie to keep me awake. I would have been jumping up and down, trying to keep myself awake, if it would not have been rude. More than once I considered suicide as an option, but I then decided to go for the healthier option, homicide. I chewed off every single fingernail. Mind aching doldrums would have been more interesting. I actually feared snoring and humiliating myself through the movie. Would it be cheating on my husband if I slept with an entire theater of people?
Josh Hartnett has no personality in Resurrecting the Champ, and in fact may be the personality vacuum where other personalities get sucked in, never to be seen again. He couldn’t have been more trite, less interesting, and more forgettable. If Hartnett doesn’t find a way to rely less on his beauty to get him through, he’ll never be anything other than the contents of a nice photograph.
I am most disappointed with Jackson. He has proven time and again that he is a great actor who takes any and all roles that come along. He continues to align himself with those features that could kill his career because he decides on quantity over quality. He isn’t even good in this movie. He had a terrible script to work with but he still didn’t seem to make the character his own. He is cliché and boring.
Jackson’s prosthetics were terrible. Allan A Apone, the makeup artist for Jackson should be banned for ever from doing movie makeup. The prosthetics and makeup were a different color than Jackson’s face so you could tell where they start and end. He looks like he put his face in a giant vat of Elmer’s Glue, stood up, swirled it around a bit and let it set. What a horrible excuse for a face.
Miss this movie; miss it and thank me. You don’t want to have your soul sucked or get bruises on your forehead.