skip to main |
skip to sidebar
When is a boxing movie not a boxing movie? When it’s actually about coming to terms with the deep-seated abandonment and inferiority complex issues you have with your derelict father. But of course, that’s only when it’s not also about the pitfalls of maintaining journalistic integrity while trying to become as prominent a reporter as the aforementioned father figure. That’s not to say that all of the above would make for a bad movie, it just means don’t believe the poster if it makes it look like another Rocky Balboa.
Erik Kernan Jr. (Josh Hartnett) is a sports journalist who spends his days and nights covering the stuff that fills in pages five and six of the Denver Times sports section. He lives in the shadow of his father, a man who took off when Erik was young to become one the most renowned boxing reporters of his day. To further complicate matters his marriage is beginning to crumble and he lies to his son to make him think he’s a better man than he really is. He’s a guy in need of a either a miracle or a therapist.
Fortunately there are miracles to be found if you know what dark Denver alleys to walk down. Kernan’s particular brand of angel is a homeless man whom everyone calls “Champ” (Samuel L. Jackson). One night while walking home from covering a match, Kernan intervenes in a fight between Champ and few drunken partiers out to take advantage of the old man who claims to be near legendary boxer Battling Bob Satterfield. It’s a suspicious claim since Satterfield was proclaimed dead decades ago. Kernan cautiously develops a relationship with the man and, believing Champ’s story that he is indeed Satterfield, sets out to write the article that just might save his career, his marriage, his relationship with his son, and give him the boost he needs to live up to his famous last name.
As Champ unfolds his amazing life story to Kernan, the already heavily burdened plot takes on another load in the form of Satterfield’s own tragic existence. There are plenty of poetic parallels between the two men’s lives and Champ’s life lessons offer Kernan the opportunity to recognize and maybe even correct some of his own mistakes before they take the same tolls on him. When Kernan’s spectacular article turns him into a celebrity overnight, things just couldn’t be any better. But it’s a reality ready to shatter like a boxer’s glass jaw when doubts are raised over whether or not Champ is who he says he is and Kernan’s integrity is brought into question.
There is a lot going on in Resurrecting The Champ; maybe too much for its own good. And yet, for all the emotional baggage flying around the movie still carves out a story that works, if only because its cast does such a phenomenal job.
Hartnett carries the mantle of an emotionally battered man well enough in his own scenes, but he pales in the presence of Jackson’s Champ. Jackson’s transformation into an old man who “isn’t a bum, just homeless” and he somehow manages to make even the most trite and pedantic monologue feel like pearls of grandfatherly wisdom. Even though Hartnett’s character is at the heart of the story, he comes across as playing a supporting role to Jackson who does a far better job capturing his characters’ tragedies and triumphs.
Even if Hartnett comes across as second banana, he’s in good company. Alan Alda, Teri Hatcher, Peter Coyote, Rachel Nichols and Dakota Goyo (who charmingly plays Kernan’s six-year-old son) all add wonderful depth to the film despite the thin lines they're forced to deliver.
An hour and a half long movie trapped in a two hour running time, Resurrecting the Champ’s key problem is that it tries too hard to pack in too much. The film (which is loosely based on a true story) sometimes feels like the writers had a wheel-o’-plot-points which they spun at the beginning of each new scene to decide which of many struggles their protagonist was going to have to deal with next. And yet over-burdened as it may be, it’s still a good film, even if it isn't much of a boxing flick.
Rob Zombie is back for more horror, and by that I mean both the content of his film and the execution of it. Rather than continue on with his maladjusted House of 1000 Corpses / Devils Rejects characters, Zombie is tackling a remake of a more classic movie: John Carpenter’s Halloween. The remake is very much in the vein of another recent remake of a classic horror flick: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In fact, the two remakes are so similar, at times I felt like I was watching that movie over again.
Michael Myers is the striking figure of the Halloween movies, not to be confused with the SNL actor of the same name. Over time and seven sequels Michael has been through a lot, although none of that really matters since this is a remake instead of another sequel. Zombie’s addition to the franchise is more time spent on the disturbed youth of Myers, which completely explains his sadistic behavior by surrounding the character with characters who curse every other word and fit as many sexual references into their speech as possible. The cursing is probably supposed to show the characters have no love, but it just comes across as sloppy writing that is desperately trying to show how horrible Michael’s childhood was. The result is yet another attempt to demystify an icon by showing their youth, a la Hannibal Rising and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.
As a youth Myers slays his family and those who oppose him in several different gruesome methods, from beating them to death with an aluminum bat to slashing his sister seventeen times. Yes, in a Zombie flick the gore does flow, but it’s all irrelevant. Camera shots are so tight that the audience has no frame of reference for what it’s seeing a lot of the time, so that bloody mess on screen could be a broken face or a smashed cat, or possibly even just a nasty plate of spaghetti. Mixed with yet another movie that tries to make things “more real” by refusing use of a steadycam, the cinematography is one of the movie’s worst enemies. It’s called a “motion picture” but that doesn’t mean the picture should literally always be moving. Sadly, here, it frequently is, and with shots so tight the result is you have no idea what you’re watching or where characters are in relation to each other.
This becomes especially frustrating later in the film, as an adult Michael Myers breaks out of the sanitarium and returns to his family home for reasons unknown, pursued by his psychologist, Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell). Unlike the original, this time it’s fairly clear the pursued girl, Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) is related to Michael – after all, there’s an entire franchise that has established this and Zombie isn’t straying that far from familiar territory. What’s unknown is why Michael feels the need to return there of all places. Somehow, Dr. Loomis knows that’s where he’s going and follows, desperate to stop the killer.
Zombie damages his own attempt at a remake by exposing so much of Michael’s childhood. Frankly, once we’ve seen Michael commit such atrocities as a youth, there’s really nothing surprising or shocking about the acts he commits as an adult. It’s just a matter of time.
Unfortunately, time, or the pacing of the movie, is another serious problem. Part of Michael Myer’s threat is that he’s always been this slow, lumbering yet unstoppable force. Here he feels less like a lumbering character and more like a plodding one. Part of the reason is because the movie doesn’t really build towards any sort of climax. It’s just one quick encounter with Michael followed by an eternity of boredom. Instead of a curious terror we know nothing about, he’s far too familiar to us by the time the slaughter really begins, and the pauses in between that would normally heighten anticipation just kill everything.
On top of everything else, I really hate what Zombie attempts to do with the movie’s sound editing. Some scenes feature music with no sound effects, others feature sound effects and no dialogue. Michael’s typical threatening breathing is inconsistent, which, again, removes some of the menace from the character. It felt like Zombie just went into editing on a daily basis with a “this seems like fun today” approach. The result is just flat-out annoying.
I really didn’t mind Zombie when he was making cinematic disasters with his own characters. After all, he created them. Let him mess them up however he sees fit. There is no excuse for messing with this classic character, however, especially when so many sequels have already messed things up. If Zombie had decided to throw another sequel in, I probably wouldn’t have minded, but this needless remake is barely watchable, annoying on the ears, and a snoozer of a story that deconstructs another character that was better left as an enigma.
Most Americans haven’t really had the chance to appreciate the quirky humor of Mr. Bean, especially if their only experience with Rowan Atkinson’s bumbling character was the painfully dull Bean which bored theater audiences to tears in the late 90s. Those of us on the States side of the pond who were lucky enough to have a television station that aired old BBC shows know Atkinson has much more to offer. Mr. Bean doesn’t need a stupid Americanized family-comedy script to be funny, and in fact he does better without much of a script at all. Someone had that realization when they pulled together Bean’s latest cinematic adventure and the result is classic Mr. Bean comedy goodness.
There’s still a big problem though: Mr. Bean is at his best in small doses. Those ten to fifteen minute sketches from the show were absolutely perfect. In movie form Bean is still good for a laugh and as always Atkinson’s comedic talents are spot on from start to finish, but a solid hour and half is just too darn long.
Thankfully, even though you could pack a big complicated comedic plot into those ninety minutes, the movie keeps things simple and sweet. Mr. Bean wins a local contest and the prize is a trip to the beach on the French Riviera. It’s a straightforward starting point, the perfect sort of situation for Bean to get into trouble.
Setting off with video camera in hand, he can’t even get on the train without creating chaos. An innocent mistake causes Bean to accidentally separate a young Russian boy from his father. The train pulls away with Bean and the boy on board and the left-behind father, a famous juror for the Cannes film festival, thinking that Bean has kidnapped his son launches a nationwide search for his missing son. Not that I blame him. If I had a kid I’d be worried too if he was last seen in the presence of someone as creepy as Mr. Bean.
From there the movie is one wacky scenario after another. Atkinson carries the film with his amazing and flawless physical comedy and as always does it with a bare minimum of dialogue. As the story progresses the different scenes feel more like disconnected skits than parts of a plot and Mr. Bean’s constant shtick with the video camera begins to get tiresome. But just when it seems things can’t possibly be going anywhere worthwhile, they twist in on themselves to form a clever little ending that ties everything together while adding a very unexpected (but perhaps well deserved) slap in the face to the artsy-fartsy pretentious side of the film industry.
Atkinson’s gifts for contorting his face and body into the most hilarious forms are a definite treat, and he somehow keeps things fresh through the entire film, but even the freshest dessert makes you ill to your stomach if you have too much. Still, it’s nice to see a Mr. Bean movie that doesn’t make me want to put a plastic bag over my head to end the monotony.
There are a few surprises in Balls of Fury. For instance it’s not the direct rip-off of Dodgeball that you might expect it to be, and the sport of ping-pong is more exciting to watch than you’d think. But the jokes are stale and the movie’s best moments come courtesy of Christopher Walken who, let’s be honest, gets bonus points just for being Christopher Walken.
The film stars a relatively unknown comedic actor named Dan Fogler. Calling him a comedic actor may however, be somewhat generous. Dan’s comedic repertoire consists mostly of being fat and sweaty, and that stops being funny after about five seconds. Fogler plays disgraced former child ping-pong champ Randy Daytona, and the once great kid ping-pong player he was has grown up into a hairy mess. For rather stupid reasons he’s recruited by the FBI and asked to infiltrate the ping-pong tournament of a notorious criminal named Feng. He agrees, since Feng is the man who killed his father or something.
Doesn’t matter. The result is that Randy is teamed up with a loser Mexican FBI agent (George Lopez), a blind master ping-pong instructor named Wong (James Hong), and the master’s super-hot niece Maggie (Maggie Q). Together they travel into Feng’s lair and then we’re treated to 90 minutes of gags designed to poke fun of Wong’s blindness. Yep, most of the movie’s jokes have nothing to do with ping-pong. Instead the film is scene after scene after scene of Wong walking into things, falling over, and pointing in the wrong direction. This is a one-joke movie, and it’s a joke that’s been done dozens of times before in movies a lot funnier than this one. Personally, my favorite incarnation of the hapless blind sidekick bit was in Robin Hood: Men In Tights, in which Robin’s trusty blind sidekick Blinkin ends up dueling a stone column to the death.
Chris Walken plays the movie’s villain and while funny, would been funnier if I hadn’t seen him playing this same character in The Rundown. Walken’s performance, as usual, boils down to him parodying himself. He’s not playing a guy named Feng, he’s playing a Christopher Walken playing a guy named Feng, and that’s funny because, well, he’s Walken. It’s entertaining even if it is recycled.
The weird thing is that I found myself wishing they’d drop all pretense of doing comedy and simply shown us more ping-ponging. Like all Americans, I find table tennis incredibly boring, but director Ben Garant shoots it in a way that actually makes hitting a tiny white ball across a kitchen table strangely exciting. If only he’d been able to work that same kind of magic on Balls of Fury’s lifeless, derivative script.
When is a boxing movie not a boxing movie? When it’s actually about coming to terms with the deep-seated abandonment and inferiority complex issues you have with your derelict father. But of course, that’s only when it’s not also about the pitfalls of maintaining journalistic integrity while trying to become as prominent a reporter as the aforementioned father figure. That’s not to say that all of the above would make for a bad movie, it just means don’t believe the poster if it makes it look like another Rocky Balboa.
