“Resurrecting the Champ”

If your mother says she loves you, check it out.

Back in my college days, those were words to live by. At least they were after my professors -- many of them cum laude graduates of the school of street smarts -- beat them into my not-quite-empty head.

Clearly, the protagonist of "Resurrecting the Champ" is in desperate need of just such journalism training.

Just as clearly, journalist-turned-filmmaker Rod Lurie ("The Contender") has his own lesson to learn.

It's the one about keeping your eye on the ball -- or, in this case, the most interesting character in the movie.

In "Resurrecting the Champ," it's the title character -- a battered ex-boxer, on the skids and on the streets, whom everyone had given up for dead long ago.

He's played by Samuel L. Jackson, in a socko performance that almost single-handedly saves the movie from its own earnest posturing.

Jackson's undoubtedly the main attraction, but he's not the main character.

That role is assumed ("filled" would be a stretch) by the achingly sincere, in-over-his-head Josh Hartnett, playing the sportswriter who resurrects the champ in question.

The movie was inspired by Los Angeles Times' J.R. Moehringer's 1998 article (a Pulitzer Prize finalist) about former heavyweight "Battlin' " Bob Satterfield -- and Moehringer's own need to track down the father who abandoned him as a boy.

The movie retains that fathers-and-sons theme by making Hartnett's character, Erik, the son of a renowned boxing announcer who was never around.

Erik, now a second-string sportswriter for a Denver newspaper, is determined to be a better father than his own ever was. He's there for his adoring son (Dakota Goyo), to be sure, but can't resist feeding him colorful lies about his many sports superstar pals so the little tyke will love him.

In truth, Erik's getting ho-hum assignments from his flinty editor (Alan Alda), who complains about his workmanlike prose and grind-it-out attitude -- while his estranged wife ("Cold Case's" Kathryn Morris) pursues an award-winning career.

So the ambitious Erik looks for a ticket to the front page.

He finds it when, following a sporting event, he rescues a shambling homeless man (Jackson) from some nasty blowhards who revel in the chance to taunt, and beat up, "The Champ."

Turns out, however, that the Champ truly earned his nickname back in the day, when he was third in the heavyweight rankings and served as Rocky Marciano's sparring partner.

Almost as soon as he meets the Champ, byline-hungry Erik recognizes the down-but-not-outer as a potential ticket out of the sports section's inside pages -- and into the Sunday magazine cover story limelight.

At least until Erik discovers that, in his zeal for a headline-grabbing story, not everything falls neatly into place. Especially when he doesn't do his homework, failing to check out some crucial question marks in the Champ's hard-times tales.

That in turn sets the stage for Erik's own hard times, even as he glories in the story's success -- and a national spotlight covering boxing on television, just as his father did all those years ago.

In addition to its fathers-and-sons focus, "Resurrecting the Champ" explores other provocative themes, particularly the fleeting glories of sport -- and the symbiotic relationship between sports and the media types who cover it, celebrating the winners, then moving on to the next round of winners without so much as a backward glance at yesterday's winners-turned-losers.

Screenwriters Michael Bortman ("The Good Mother") and Allison Burnett ("Autumn in New York") also zero in on the symbiotic relationship between reporters and their subjects -- which can be a respectful, mutually beneficial relationship or a cynical, manipulative one. (That anguished line from Bob Seger's "Night Moves" -- "I used her, she used me, but neither one cared" -- seems eerily appropriate.)

That's a lot of territory for a movie to cover, and "Resurrecting the Champ" can't always keep up the juggling routine -- especially because it keeps following Erik, when we'd so much rather follow the Champ.

As a result, Lurie is forced to treat the movie like a last-minute packer's bulging suitcase, opening it again and again to cram in one more forgotten piece of narrative baggage, whether it's the Champ's proud estranged son ("24" powerhouse Harry Lennix, in yet another sadly abbreviated role) or a grizzled old-timer (Peter Coyote) who questions Erik's facts.

Jackson, not surprisingly, anchors the movie with a performance that's equal parts showboating and subtlety, capturing the Champ's slow, sad street shuffle -- and the once-powerful puncher who's still alive somewhere inside.

Jackson has been down this road before, playing a composer-turned-homeless-avenger in 2001's "The Caveman's Valentine." Nobody noticed that time, but "Resurrecting the Champ" should be a different story. Just not necessarily the right one.