Tyson (2008)

Tyson (2008)

Directed by James Toback

           

            Wow! This movie was a freaking powerhouse!  I’d heard a lot about this one going into it, but I didn’t even expect half of what I received.  Read on, faithful reader(s)!

            Tyson is a documentary.  It is set up as an interview (or, several, as the case may be) with Mike Tyson.  He gives us a history of his life, and speaks quite candidly, about every subject, from his childhood, to the infamous ear-bite, to the (alleged) rape of Desiree Washington, and his marriage to Robin Givens.  That’s it.  That’s all this movie is.  A conversation.  Doesn’t sound like much, right?  Well, guess again.  Like most documentaries, the interview is cleverly edited, the screen usually being separated into several parts, at times each one taking up more screenspace than the others (kind of the way The Fourth Kind did it).  The interviews are interspersed with footage of Tyson’s fights, his training, and other public appearances.

            I never imagined that this flick would impact me the way it did.  Like most people, I’ve always thought of Mike Tyson as an animal, a freak, a beast, a monster.  And in some ways, he is.  But mostly, he’s just the same as us.  When Tyson spoke about his former manager Cuss D’Amato, Tyson was genuinely moved, and so was I.  Cuss was the father figure that Tyson never had.  He helped Mike straighten out his life, and he gave him something to live for.  Tyson loved Cuss, and you could feel it.  Very rarely does a movie move me the way this one did, and those scenes in particular (the closest I’ve felt was when I watched the brilliant documentary Dear Zachary, but that’s for another time).  You’ll feel everything that Tyson felt when you watch this.  Anger, joy, sadness, laughter, and you’ll feel most of them in the same extremes that Mike felt.  It seems to me, that Mike Tyson is a man cursed by a personality that dwells in the extreme.  He admits that he’s never been in the middle, there is no “gray area”, everything is black and white for him.  He says that when he goes for something, he refuses to give up, and I can jive with that, it’s a good philosophy.

            This was an excellent flick, and it diserves your attention.  I read recently that during test screenings James Toback, the film’s director, would intentionally seek out people that were completely out of the movie’s demographic – specifically middle-aged white women that knew nothing about boxing.  Before they went into the screening, he would say “If you walk out within the first 5 minutes, I’ll give you $100.  If you don’t walk out within the first 5 minutes, then you have to stay for the whole thing, and you have to give your complete, honest reaction to the film.”  Apparantly, not one woman walked out, and many of them were in tears by the end of the flick. 

On another interesting side-note, this flick was co-produced by Nicholas Jarecki, who also co-wrote and co-produced The Informers, the last piece of crap that I reviewed.