The Champ

Director Franco Zeffirelli (Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet) trades in his puffy shirts for boxing gloves in this 1979 re-make of the Wallace Berry/Jackie Cooper classic. Jon Voight plays Billy Flynn, a down-on-his-luck boxer who is working as a stable man for horses in Florida. T.J. (Ricky Schroder) is his plucky son who looks after him. An unrepentant gambler and drinker, Billy needs looking after. But the father/son bond is torn asunder when Billy's upper-crust ex-wife Annie (Faye Dunaway) suddenly reappears to claim T.J. Billy realizes that the only way for him to hold on to his son is to re-enter the boxing ring and try for a comeback.