A lot of times, studios will go out of their way to “oversell” a movie. By this I mean not just showcasing the funniest or brawniest bits in an effort to entice filmgoers into theaters, but featuring a certain out-of-left-field hook or mid-film twist (say, like Ransom’s televised upping of the ante by Mel Gibson) as a centerpiece of the movie’s promotional campaign.

Director Rod Lurie’s Resurrecting the Champ, on the other hand, is being sold in relatively straightforward fashion, and pleasantly so. Part of that might have to do with the fact that the movie is being distributed by Yari Film Group, a relatively upstart company that has experienced critical and to-scale commercial success with somewhat unlikely fare like the Oscar-winning Crash and Neil Burger’s The Illusionist, starring Edward Norton and Jessica Biel. The manner in which the subversion of expectation aids in and deepens one’s appreciation for Resurrecting the Champ is directly related to its television and print advertising, which reduces the story to the simple theme of uplift.

That’s legitimate enough. It’s not that the movie is being sold as something it’s not. It is a story about a forgotten old boxer living on the streets, and a struggling young journalist who tries to make his name by telling this man’s remarkable story. But it’s also a throwback film of sorts that, like the self-established parameters of life that everyday living reliably destroys, is about several things at once, and the manner in which our judgments and actions both reflect and belie us.

What Resurrecting the Champ most has going for it is a certain lived-in quality that strikes you as an antidote of sorts to all the saccharine and-or carefully prescribed plot tracks of many more conventional dramas. Like the recent Bourne films, actually, the drama in the movie flows from decisions made by its lead character(s), but also how others interpret and react to those choices. For the full review, from FilmStew, click here.