Tyson

Mike Tyson is guilty of many things: violence; arrogance; stupidity. And he’s guilty, too, of a crime. He stands convicted not just by the court of history as the ‘baddest man on the planet’, but by a judge and jury in the state of Indiana as a rapist.

The question facing director James Toback is how do you persuade people to spend 90 minutes in the company of a freak? Because that’s what Tyson is, or at least, what he has become. “I never really had an image of myself,” he says; but then he never really needed one. Tyson has been defined by others for his entire life; a creation of hype and headlines – a post-modern monster for the media age.

But here, alone on a sofa, Toback has allowed Tyson to reclaim a sense of himself – to tell his own story in his own words. The result is a head-spinning defiance of expectations.

From a small boy bullied by classmates to the undisputed Heavyweight Champion of the world, Tyson was stalked by fear. Harnessed by his trainer Cus D’Amato, it gave him the strength he needed to survive, robbed of D’Amato’s guiding hand, it became the helpless rage that destroyed him.

Acting more as therapist than filmmaker, Toback coaxes some extraordinary insights into how it felt to be at the eye of Hurricane Mike. There are the parties, the spending sprees, the multiple homes and, of course, the fights – always the fights. The footage of Tyson in his heyday is both ferocious and strangely sad. It’s only in the ring that his expression seems to change, when the mask drops and a kind of ecstatic rage is revealed. At his peak, Tyson possessed a savage beauty that teetered on the brink of anarchy. “In the ring I’m a god,” he says. But it was outside the ring that his legacy was cemented.

More than boxing perhaps, it was the women in his life that shaped Tyson. He speaks explicitly of his sexual conquests – how he loved to dominate women in the bedroom, to find a powerful partner and break her, to tell her ‘no’. For Tyson, sex and boxing were expressions of power. Here in these small, simple spaces he could turn his back on the world and take control. He could be himself, even if, in being himself, he became an animal.

Which brings Tyson to the subject of Desiree Washington – “that wretched swine of a woman”. And yet, when he denies raping her in a hotel room in 1991, you might just find yourself believing him. When you’ve confessed to every other dirty little secret – when history has already condemned you – why continue to fight? Or is fighting written so deeply into Tyson’s DNA that he simply can’t stop?

James Toback hasn’t set out to exculpate Tyson – against all odds, he earns a measure of sympathy. He’s an angry, violent, contradictory man, but when he tells you that he’s been betrayed by everybody he ever loved, that he lives in fear, that he’s alone, you’ll believe him – and maybe feel for him – because the truth is undeniable.

For the first time in his life he looks vulnerable. “I got old too soon and smart too late,” he says. And then Mike Tyson – the man who once promised to eat Lennox Lewis’ children – cries: a wet, gurgling choke that rises from some secret place. At that point you realise that James Toback has taken you straight through the looking glass and way, way out the other side.

Matt Bochenski

Anticipation:

Promises all the ugly fascination of a public hanging.

Enjoyment:

It may not take place in the ring, but this is a bruising encounter with a deeply flawed human being.

In Retrospect:

Tyson won’t shatter all your preconceptions, but if you don’t at least question them, you haven’t been paying attention.