Undisputed

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

A compelling entertainment because of Hill and co-writer David Giler's adroit cinematic storytelling skills and the powerful presence of Wesley Snipes and Ving Rhames, whose talent and intelligence are as impressive as their physiques.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Few directors are able to showcase actors with fast-cutting techniques. Hill is an ace at it because everything about his action is organic.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Undisputed is a shrewd and splendidly volatile B movie structured around a highly original gambit of suspense.

Variety Robert Koehler

With Undisputed, writer-director Walter Hill is back in contention as one of Hollywood's last defenders of the muscular, no-nonsense genre movie.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

A triumph of craft and narrative economy, the darkly funny Undisputed is as lean, mean, and skillful as its competing heavyweights.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It's so gritty it'll get under your fingernails. And it harks back to one of Hill's greatest films from the '70s, "Hard Times."

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

There's no denying that Undisputed delivers the action-movie goods, and so do Snipes and Rhames. It should have been more memorable, but at least it doesn't stumble in the ring.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

There is a kind of pleasure to be had from its directness, from its lack of gimmicks, from its classical form. And just like in the Warners pictures, there is also the pleasure of supporting performances from character actors who come onstage, sing an aria, and leave.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Offers nothing new to the long tradition of boxing films. But Hill's reverence for the classic form and the stone-cold performances of Rhames and Snipes propel the whole thing forward with a prefight buildup that's more fun -- and probably more honest -- than the awkward attempts at macho showmanship we get from real fighters these days.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A muscular, no-nonsense genre pic (well, two genres: prisons and boxing), Undisputed isn't going to score points for originality, and the climactic bout is a bit of a letdown. But Rhames, as the cocksure millionaire pugilist, seethes brute force.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's professional, smart, quick-footed and snappy -- enviable traits in both a prizefighter and a nice little B-movie.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Stars are particularly strong. Snipes' fatalism is totally appealing, and Rhames makes a curiously compelling antihero.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Again, Hill gives us a world filled with morally complex characters, but that just may be this film's undoing.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

An unassuming, brief and cheaply entertaining boxing movie. It's long on punching and short on character, but you wouldn't go to a Hill movie to see "Raging Bull."

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Isn't exactly memorable, and as far as its prison setting goes, it has nothing on HBO's infinitely more brutal "Oz." But as late-summer time killers go, you could do worse.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The picture is entertaining and brutal (it's a movie about tough convicts fighting, after all), but it can't figure out what kind of movie it would like to be.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Lacks more than subtext: it barely has text. At times, the picture seems to have been edited with a blowtorch. But it gets the job done efficiently and swiftly.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The film has two highlights -- a profanity-laced monologue by Peter Falk about boxing and the one-on-one confrontation between Monroe and Chambers in the ring.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Has a certain B-movie integrity -- a muscular commitment to grabbing the viewer's eye and keeping things moving. It won't win any awards, but it holds interest.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Isn't unequivocally bad. Rather, this is what's known in the boxing world as an "opponent" -- shows up on the weekend just to fill out the card, to do battle with its betters, earn a little cash and be completely forgotten come Monday morning.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Basically the Mike Tyson saga reduced to its B-movie essence.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

There are moments when Hill and Giler dare to turn Undisputed into an episode of ''Oz'' - albeit an insipid, belligerence-, and sex-free episode.

Film Threat Michael Dequina

Falls apart with the slightest nudge -- of thought, that is.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

The movie is typical Hill-pulp: modestly scaled and efficiently cheesy.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Shot through the bars of a barbed-wire topped cage and staged to a pounding soundtrack, the fight is quite a spectacle, but it's ultimately an empty one.

Wall Street Journal Collin Levey

Mr. Snipes and Mr. Rhames get credit at least for doing their own stunts. By the middle of the film, viewers will take a certain satisfaction in each punch that lands on either of them.

LA Weekly Dan Fienberg

With flashbulb editing as cover for the absence of narrative continuity, Undisputed is nearly incoherent, an excuse to get to the closing bout (shot through bars and barbed wire in case we forgot the combatants are incarcerated), by which time it's impossible to care who wins.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Even by its own please-the-mob standards, this movie is lacking.

New Times (L.A.) Gregory Weinkauf

If only director Walter Hill and his coscreenwriter David Giler had scribbled a punch line for all these punches, this rage-in-the-cage redux would be more than merely a limp showcase of machismo so passé as to embarrass your average Australopithecus.