"Resurrecting the Champ" is the story of a sportswriter who discovers his ticket to the big leagues in the form of a big, fat story. Then a trick of fate intervenes, and his ride to the top may turn out to be a one-way to the bottom unless he learns to fake contrition and humility fast.

The movie, which stars Josh Hartnett as the sportswriter and Samuel L. Jackson as the story, has the disadvantage of being set in newspaper culture, on a big daily called "The Times" in Denver. To anyone who has hung out in a newsroom, it gets so many nuances wrong that you can hardly watch it.

It begins with Hartnett, as Erik Kernan, setting what he thinks is a manly tone in the voice-over. "Writing," he (more or less) says, "is just like boxing. In both of them, you're in the ring alone. You're naked." Er, yeah, just like boxing, except of course nobody's trying to beat your head to pulp, and there are no issues of courage, stamina, speed and pain thresholds. You think in the first seconds: If he doesn't see through that self-dramatizing bombast, how can he ever hope to write well? Wilbon, sit on this guy, will you?

Anyway, Erik is the No. 3 sportswriter at the Times and can't seem to get any higher. But that changes when he sees some kids hassling a homeless guy, who turns out to be, though much the worse for wear, Bob Satterfield, a ranked heavyweight in the '50s who was once a fight away from a championship bout -- but he lost it. Now he's a peeping-voiced, shuffling Denver homeless guy. Erik sees gold: He sees one of those great, tragic sports pieces on the pain of a fallen hero. The movie pretends this ancient trope has never been done before, and it pretends a cover story in the Sunday magazine of a Denver newspaper could turn a journeyman into a star in about three days. It also pretends a professional newspaper copy desk could make an error so gigantic that it makes "Dewey Wins" seem like the horoscope.

Hardly anything feels real, but what feels even more unreal is Hartnett with a cloying, sentimental, self-pitying performance. The liveliest thing in the film is the great Jackson, slumming again in a role miles beneath him.

-- Stephen Hunter (August 24, 2007)

Contains violence and brief language.