Tyson

By A. Chow

Back at the height of Mike Tyson’s formidable career, I was too young to understand the scope of what the words “Mike Tyson” carried. My only image of Mike Tyson was formed by the over-the-top and ridiculous imitations on In Living Color - the high-pitched lisp and the boisterous, superfluous (and impetuous) way that he spoke. Which in all honesty, turns out to be not that far off.

Tyson, directed by James Toback (When Will I Be Loved, Harvard Man), is dominantly one-sided, all told through the words of Tyson himself, mixed with archival fight footage and a few bits and pieces of home videos and old interviews. After years, decades even, of being publicly paraded around as a silly off-kilter, fallen athlete, Toback allows him the opportunity to be seen as a man and not a media-created image of buffoonery.

Other than the campy/Harlequin-esque, silhouette-y shots of Tyson introspectively roaming a beach at sunset, Tyson was fairly straightforward. The sole talking head interview was edited along with the archival footage in a 24, moving screen way and the only difficulty I faced was trying to keep up with Tyson’s fast-talking stories. From his days as a loose canon street kid, to his life-changing relationship with legendary trainer Cus D’Amato, Tyson takes you through the journey from his good days and bad.

The surprisingly self-aware Tyson delves unabashedly into his past as his days as a common thief to the height of his stardom and his “quest to conquer women.” Tyson willingly shares details about his past and sometimes to a point of no return. His in-depth description of how he likes to make love to a woman, for instance, is something I could have gone without. And Tyson himself has even expressed regret for his candidness. “I look at it now and I’m embarrassed I did it. There’s a lot of information people didn’t need to know,” reports The New York Times. Tyson does however, apologize for his vulgarities calling himself a “pig.”

The film also chronicles Tyson’s career changing fights, from his first championship knockout with Trevor Berbeck, to, his first KO by Buster Douglas, and to the infamous biting match with Evander Holyfield. Both colourful and exciting, Tyson chronicles the highs and lows of Mike’s career and we get an inside look to Tyson’s brutal ferocity, who often referred to himself as a “beast” or an “animal.” His temper not only to be contended with in the ring, the film also touches on his tumultuous marriage to actress Robin Givens and his three-year prison sentence for his conviction of rape, that he vehemently denies. The rage within him seems to be on the verge of eruption at any moment, an old press conference clip of Tyson proof of his fragile temper. A spectator yells out that he should be in a straightjacket and Tyson goes on a tirade of expletives and rage. Testimony that Mike Tyson should be someone you think twice about when picking a fight. “I’ll fuck you till you love me,” he says.

Startlingly, Tyson, also shows a softer side of Mike. Reliving the death of Cus D’Amato and his time spent incarcerated, he has trouble with the words. His eyes narrowing, his throat closing in on him from fighting the tears, Tyson struggles with his composure, comparing incarceration to “the closest thing to death.”

Though Tyson paints a very different picture from what we are all so use to, it is up to the viewer to decide for himself who, the man, Mike Tyson, is. Heavily one-sided, Tyson has even sparked outrage from Tyson’s former Assistant Manager, Steve Lott, who claims Tyson made up “lie after lie” in the film. Fabricated or not, Tyson gives us another piece of the celebrity meltdown puzzle.