SteveSilver.net

Film Critic Quote of the Week

Indiewire's Nick Pinkerton, on the extremely middling "Resurrecting the Champ," which I saw last night:

"The process of dramatization also allows for the creation of a minefield of untenable invented scenes: Jackson is introduced when being pummeled by some popped-collar suburban punks in a crass move to eke out audience sympathy; the real-life Champ's unsavory criminal history is conveniently omitted from the film, making for a portrait of the man as sanitized as punch-drunk-naive Rocky Balboa is to Chuck Wepner. Easily the high watermark of absurdity comes when Erik, after his article's fact-checking becomes a point of public debate (the script gloms onto the whole literary hoax/ journalistic integrity vogue), has to face his kid's "Career Day," where he's grilled by a classroom of nine-year-olds, a scene that doesn't remotely resemble anything that might conceivably happen in the world we live in. Almost the only moment that gives off any stink of shoe-leather reportage--lifted more or less intact from the source article, which makes everything of the investigative process--is a visit to some ancient cornermen at a boxing gym, barely an aside."

I liked the movie more than he did, though it's one of those films that's great for the first hour before dissolving into a silly, unsubtle, way-too-long ending. It's better than the usual crap directed by Rod Lurie who, to be fair, also created the underrated TV show "Line of Fire," the one where David Paymer played a mob boss.

Posted by Stephen Silver at August 22, 2007 04:13 PM