Resurrecting the Champ

Erik Kernan Jr. is a sportswriter at the Denver Times, stuck on the lower rungs of his paper and living in the shadow of his late father, a well-known broadcaster. When he rescues a homeless man from a street fight, the man calls himself Champ and claims to be Battling Bob Satterfield, a boxer long thought dead. Erik brings the story to print, seeing both the professional break he has been chasing and a chance to step out of his father's shadow. The deeper he goes into verifying the claim, the more the piece forces him to look at his own life, including his separation from his wife and his relationship with his young son.

Rod Lurie directed the film, the fourth of his features by the chronology given, between The Last Castle and Nothing But the Truth. Allison Burnett and Michael Bortman wrote the screenplay, and Bob Yari, Mike Medavoy and Lurie produced it. Samuel L. Jackson plays Champ, Josh Hartnett plays Erik, and the cast includes Alan Alda as Ralph Metz, Teri Hatcher as Andrea Flak, Kathryn Morris as Joyce Kernan and Dakota Goyo as Teddy Kernan, with 21 credited cast members in all.

The film runs 112 minutes and was released in June 2007. On IMDb it holds a 6.7/10 from around 22,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.3/10 from far fewer votes. A critics' rating of 6.3/10 from 115 reviews places it roughly level with the audience score on TMDB and slightly below the IMDb figure.