The Champ (1979)
Directed by Franco Zeffirelli
Billy used to be a great boxer, but he's settled into a hardscrabble life that revolves around drinking, training horses, and the one bright spot in his existence — his young son, T.J. Although Billy has had custody of T.J. since his wife, Annie, left the family years ago, her return prompts a new struggle for the former fighter. Determined to hold on to his son, Billy gets back into the ring to try and recapture his past success.
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What critics compared The Champ to
It contains echoes of Rocky, Raging Bull, Million Dollar Baby, even that Jon Voight weepie, The Champ.
A flurry of haymakers in the form of boxing movie cliches, "Southpaw" was conceived as a loose remake of "The Champ" — Wallace Beery in 1931, Jon Voight in 1979 — tailored for Marshall Mathers, also known as Eminem.
Think of this trite fight film as a close relative of "The Champ," and I'm talking more about the equally contrived 1979 remake (with Jon Voight and Ricky Schroder) than the ancient 1931 Oscar winner (with Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper).
“Southpaw” is, like most fellow boxing movies, a shameless melodrama, one that mixes “Rocky III” with “Rocky V,” plus bits of Franco Zeffirelli’s unwatchable 1979 remake of “The Champ,” in which Jon Voight and Ricky Schroeder tussle over who can mug more.
The powerful boxing scenes, vividly shot from Madison Square Garden to Vegas by Mauro Fiore and edited by John Refoua, help distract from the father-daughter scenes that outdo The Champ (the Wallace Beery original and the Jon Voight remake) for gooey sentiment.
A 'Robo-Rocky’-like mash-up full of 'rock-'em/sock-'em’ action, Shawn Levy’s Real Steel reimagines the father/son boxing melodrama The Champ (1931, 1979) for the gamer generation... and it damn near pulls it off.
What they're really done, however, is pretty much make a high-tech variation of "The Champ," the 1979 flick -- recently named the saddest movie ever and a remake itself of the 1931 film of the same name -- where Jon Voight played a former boxer with a gambling problem who tries to make a comeback while raising his young son.
But once everyone sees the movie — which is like The Champ if Jon Voight listened to Mötley Crüe, had his own action figure, and occasionally let another man in tights shoot him in the chest with a staple gun (it is to the movie’s endless credit that this scene is actually moving) — that’ll change fast.