Josh and Kathryn Morris Credit: Yari Film Group

Contrary to the title, the casting and the television commercials, Resurrecting the Champ is not another one of those sports movies about underdogs who come from behind to triumph in the big game in the last reel. Those films suggest that the complexities of life can be solved by keeping score and that all of life's disappointments will be cured if the score tallies highest on the proper side of the ledger.

Life isn't that simple. Nor is Resurrecting the Champ.

Although it stoops to emotionalism at times, this is an absorbing morality tale that eventually demands that you ask yourself, "What would I do?" It's about two men of vastly different age and background who are, as one of them puts it, "down and nearly out." Both of them see things not as they are but as they wish they were.

The setting, primarily, is not a boxing ring but a newspaper office - the fictional Denver Times.

Erik Kernan (Josh Hartnett) is a sports writer who feels frustrated because he thinks his editor cuts any of his efforts to add a bit of spark or emotion to his writing. The editor says, "I see lots of typing - but little writing." When we meet the writer, he's covering a prize fight that gets run on page 10. He lives in the shadow of his late father, a famous sportscaster whom he never really knew.