If you don't recognize Samuel L. Jackson at first in Resurrecting the Champ, it may be because the movie is actually good.

Freedomland? Snakes on a Plane? Home of the Brave? Jackson, like other fine actors with questionable tastes, has spent far too much time -- and spread himself far too thin -- in the service of schlock.

Here, though, as a famed former fighter as punch-drunk on past boxing glories as paper-bagged swill, he's snagged a film equal to his gifts -- as well as to his appetite for physical elasticity. Gone are his signature swagger and voice -- both stripped away for a haggard, broken-down shuffle and pained wheeze. It's a remarkably tattered turn in an ambitious drama that swings at a lot of themes -- boxing, journalism, the male id, how fathers reverberate in the lives of their sons -- but connects more than it misses.

Josh Hartnett -- yes, the one who's usually as intriguing as an ottoman -- proves surprisingly solid as Erik Kernen Jr., a sports writer struggling to get noticed at his big-city newspaper. Problem is, he's a middling scribe.

"All typing, no writing," the surly sports editor (Alan Alda) gripes of Erik's copy before telling him, "Don't get like a chick. Recognize your weaknesses and fix them."

But Erik, chick that he apparently is, has other plans, conspiring to land a prestigious gig at the paper's magazine - against the advice of his estranged wife (Kathryn Morris), an editor at the paper and mother of his six-year-old son Teddy (Dakota Goyo). Shortly thereafter following a boxing match, he encounters the bedraggled Champ in a seedy, darkened alley. When Champ claims to be Battlin' Bob Sattlefield, a heavyweight champion long believed dead, Erik views the homeless man's tale of sorrow as his chance at respect and validation. The resulting article sees him showered him with notoriety and success -- we know this because Teri Hatcher's voracious television executive promptly head-hunts him --but also generates controversy and confusion. Throughout, Hartnett is convincing -- identifiable if not especially likeable -- as a man still wounded by a childhood estrangement from his father, a radio broadcaster whose shadow has all but swallowed Erik whole.

Director Rod Lurie, a former journalist himself, predictably shows an aptitude for newsroom terrain, but proves just as skilled at telling a story that is as shrewdly topical as Michael Vick and as timeless as the lies men tell each other and the culture that lets them.

(This film is rated PG)
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