http://theartsfuse.com/2009/05/04/movie-review-tyson-interpretation-explanation-or-sheer-exploitation/
- more-716
5/4/09
Tyson directed by James Toback
At the end of "Tyson," James Toback's
movie about him, the ex-heavyweight champ, now 43 years old, breathes heavily
and falls silent. He seems talked out, and is certainly, by his own admission, punched
out. After his last bout, in 2005, a dull exhibition in which he was defeated
by journeyman fighter Ken Mcbride, Tyson caressingly wished his foe a good career,
and declared that he would no longer sully a sport he loved by participating in
it with nothing in mind but the purse.
It was a graceful departure from boxing by a
man whose entry into it was marked by unique fury. There was never a younger heavyweight
champ than Tyson, and maybe never -- as clips in the film abundantly argue -- a
more dangerous man to encounter in the ring than Tyson was in his late teens
and early twenties. The veteran trainer Cus D'amato took in the raw kid, both predator
and prey in his Brooklyn neighborhood, broke him down, according to Tyson, and put
him back together. D'Amato mentored him, taught him, filled the once insecure
fatso, helpless when bullies stole his glasses, with terrific confidence.
Tyson, after catching onto D'amato's con game, went along with it completely.
