Film Review: The rise and fall of Mike in 'Tyson'
"Tyson" is documentary as ghost-written autobiography. Directed -- or perhaps constructed is the more appropriate word -- by longtime Tyson obsessive and apparent sympathizer James Toback (who gave the "champ" a cameo in his 1999 race-identity drama, "Black and White"), the movie is basically a 90-minute first-person reminiscence.
Outside of archival footage, Tyson's familiarly incongruous soft and mockable lisp represents the only voice we hear. "I know the art of skullduggery," says Tyson, who also complains of "the chaos of the brain"; Toback stylistically suggests the "multiple voices" slugging it out within the fighter's head through split screens and soundtrack tricks that create overlapping dialogue from Tyson's monologue.
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"Tyson" stars Mike Tyson in a Sony Pictures Classics release. Rated R for language including sexual references. Watch »
Larry McConkey/Sony Pictures Classics
Former heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson (who now sports a Maori tattoo) narrates his life story in "Tyson."
Rated R for language including sexual references
Length: 90 minutes
Released: April 24, 2009 LimitedScore: 3.5
Cast: Mike Tyson
Director: James TobackProducer: Damon Bingham, Harlan Werner, Michael Tyson
Writer: James Toback
Genre: Documentary
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
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The movie doesn't sweat the details of chronology, place or even the full names of rival fighters -- this is "art," not journalism -- as Tyson recounts his "tough, gruesome" history for Toback's cameras, from bullied young pigeon-fancier to kid drug-dealer to juvenile hall habitué. "I started going there on an often basis," he says, in what will prove to be a typically Tysonian locution. (Revisiting his favorite word, he chides himself for failing to meet a challenge with "the most skullduggery of tricks.")
Tyson's rise to stardom begins after legendary trainer Cus D'Amato -- eager to nurture one final champion -- takes the untutored slugger under his wing, eventually helping to produce one of the youngest as well as fiercest heavyweight champs in history. "I turned my life over to boxing," says Tyson, as if born again (born under punches, as David Byrne sang).
Almost every significant -- and even post-significant -- pro bout is represented with at least a few moments of archival footage, including the June 8, 2002, battle with Lennox Lewis at The Pyramid (although Memphis is not identified); but Tyson's battles with personal demons are perhaps more compelling. He refers to Desiree Washington -- the former Miss Black America pageant contestant he was convicted of raping in 1992 -- as "that wretched swine of a woman," and defines Heat Miser-hairdoed ex-manager Don King as "wretched, slimy, reptilian. ... He would kill his mother for a dollar." Explains Tyson of his post-D'Amato associations: "I loved leeches -- I wanted them to suck my blood."
As for the infamous ear cannibalism episode during his 1997 fight with Evander Holyfield, Tyson simply declares: "No one can understand the mind of an extremist."
Like many intellectuals, Harvard graduate Toback is fascinated by the contradictory and tormented natures of people who might be called sensitive brutes or brutish artists. (His first and possibly best film, 1978's "Fingers," stars Harvey Keitel as a mob loan shark who longs to be a concert pianist; Toback himself is a longtime compulsive gambler.) Prizefighting, in particular, seems to attract such hero worship. (Another example: Warren Zevon's song "Boom Boom Mancini.") Toback's decision to essentially yield the floor to Tyson makes for a fascinating and engrossing film, for those interested in its subject; but anyone seeking a traditionally factual and "balanced" portrait will need to look elsewhere.
The movie is credited to Fyodor Productions, a Dostoevsky reference that seems particularly apt: the great Russian -- who arguably created the concept of the existential hero in "Notes from the Underground" -- is the author of "The Gambler," "The Raw Youth," "The Insulted and Humiliated," "Crime and Punishment," and, yes, "The Idiot."
"Tyson" is playing exclusively at Malco's Ridgeway Four.
-- John Beifuss, 529-2394
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