Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 18, 2011

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Resurrecting the Champ is authentic in its newsroom scenes, and appropriately concerned at how entertainment value trumps diligent reporting.

| Aug 28, 2007

Despite one great performance and an intriguing setup, the work is crippled by another performance that's nowhere near great, and a storyline that makes it impossible to root for the leading man.

Full Review | Aug 27, 2007

Champ is a solid effort with a lot going for it, but it suggests that Lurie still isn't willing to relax and let viewers interpret his films.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Aug 25, 2007

The writers and director bury their own story and never give their audience a reason to care about their journalist's fight for redemption.

Full Review | Aug 24, 2007

The movie itself -- which deals (not very interestingly) with the issue of journalistic integrity and (very predictably) with father-son relationships -- doesn't pack much of a wallop.

| Aug 24, 2007

While Resurrecting the Champ seems to be just what you expect, it's only when you've let your guard slip that you realize it's hiding something altogether more forceful in its glove.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 24, 2007

There's no rule that says a movie must have a likable character at its center, but it helps if a nonlikable central character is at least interesting.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Aug 24, 2007

Resurrecting the Champ is enjoyable in the moment -- But it's the complexity of Lurie's moral universe that makes it linger in the mind.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 24, 2007

...authentic isn't the word I'd use for this maudlin male weepie, a compendium of the worst clichés of sports and journalism movies.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Aug 24, 2007

What is irony if not a movie whose production notes declare 'A film about truth demands authenticity' and is not authentic?

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 24, 2007

...Resurrecting delivers a heckuva story marred by some credibility problems but lands the majority of its punches via subtly powerful performances and a moving undercard of paternal connection.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 24, 2007

Jackson does some good work, sporting a high gasp of a voice and letting his character surface to reality smoothly, but the movie becomes too much of a morality play as it unwinds.

| Aug 24, 2007

In Lurie's Resurrecting the Champ, about the only cliché missing is somebody barking 'Get me rewrite!' into a Bakelite pay phone.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 24, 2007

...director Lurie displays discipline and finesse in telling a compelling tale that explores the tensions between fathers and sons, and then some. Lurie and Jackson have also given audiences a rare and striking portrait of homelessness.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 24, 2007

Despite generating plenty of turmoil, Resurrecting the Champ fails to be compelling. It does, however, succeed in being implausible.

| Original Score: C+ | Aug 24, 2007

Jackson disappears into his role, completely convincing, but then he usually is. What a fine actor.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 24, 2007

Resurrecting the Champ is one-sided Hollywood claptrap about honesty and valor, about how the truth, sigh, can set us free -- well, some of us.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 24, 2007

Though sensitively acted by Jackson, this solemn sermonette from Rod Lurie struggles to get off the ropes and never quite establishes its rhythm.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 24, 2007