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100A documentary with no pretense of objectivity. Here is Mike Tyson's story in his own words, and it is surprisingly persuasive.
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100Toback has found a documentary subject as tragic and ridiculous, as bizarre and driven, as the heroes of his other films.
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100What emerges is a fallen warrior's tale: the inside story of a man bloodied and bowed.
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100The result is an often-anguished monologue built on pride, despair and self-defense. Accuracy aside, Tyson does work hard to analyze his own, clearly complex character. So while we only get half the picture, it makes for consistently compelling viewing.
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90No filmmaker I know has gotten as close to a professional athlete as James Toback gets to Mike Tyson in his new documentary.
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Tyson is more like a particularly riveting therapy session, with Tyson as both analyst and patient.
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90The result is as gripping as a title fight and as mesmerizing as a conversation with a cobra. You may not be happy with everything said, but you will not be bored.
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90Mr. Toback's film, partly because it restricts itself to Mr. Tyson's point of view, offers a rare and vivid study in the complexity of a single suffering, raging soul. It is not an entirely trustworthy movie, but it does feel profoundly honest.
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90An extraordinary documentary.
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90By getting Tyson to open up as he has, Toback has succeeded in illuminating one of the most polarizing, complex and -- the film almost forces one to admit -- misunderstood figures of our time.
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88You won't know what hit you after watching Tyson. This power punch to the gut is one of the best movies of any kind this year.
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88Terrifically compelling and, more than that, unexpectedly moving.
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83No other sporting figure has ever been afforded so much screen time for self-revelation: just another instance of Iron Mike's one-of-a-kind status.
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80It's a sympathetic portrait of a complex man driven by an anger that still bubbles beneath the surface.
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80If you're not really interested in Mike Tyson as a boxer and a person, the film doesn't give you much to go on. This is a movie called Tyson and it is about Mike Tyson – and nothing else.
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80Very humane portrait of a potentially extremely unlikeable character.
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80What's so affecting about him in the film, though, is that he doesn't seem monstrous at all. To the contrary, Iron Mike, having meted out epic suffering in the ring and other venues, seems to be a man who has suffered genuinely, even terribly, in the course of a life that he never believed would last 40 years.
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80The resulting portrait shows a seriously troubled man whose brutality was bred into him on the punishing streets of Brooklyn and whose modest wisdom seems as hard-won as any title. Tyson's fight career may be over, but his battle with himself has many rounds to go.
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78It's brutal to watch the bigger-they-are-the-harder-they-fall tragedy of this once-great heavyweight. In fact, it's enough to make you cry.
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75The movie humanizes Tyson and brings him down to the land of mortals, making his achievements loom larger. And if the boxer hasn't entirely made peace with his troubled soul, Tyson suggests the struggle is going his way.
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75Gives a taste of what it might be like to live inside Mike Tyson's mind.
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75Ultimately, this may be the closest we'll ever get to understanding how Mike feels about himself, and there's value in viewing that assessment.
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75An absorbing and not-too-uncomfortable experience, so long as you remember there's a camera lens and a big distance between you and the film's violent subject.
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70Tyson does succeed in humanizing a deeply troubled individual who has been depicted as an almost animalistic stereotype of African-American manhood.
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70The movie makes it clear that, for all his snarls and outbursts, he is intelligent, candid, and easily wounded; that he is by turns inordinately proud and inordinately ashamed and, above all, intensely curious about himself, as if his own nature were a mystery that had not yet been solved.
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67The result is flashy, but the meaning is a bit of a bob and weave.
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67Tyson can be brutal with himself, but Toback's fawning documentary lets him off easy.
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60It's a movie that's thought-provoking without being intelligent and candid without being truthful. The same aesthetic choices that Toback seems convinced will set his documentary apart are also what diminishes its credibility.
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Positive: 14 out of 15
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Mixed: 1 out of 15
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Negative: 0 out of 15
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8
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8A well made documentary about one of the most misunderstood sports figure in history.