“I attacked him…in front of these old decrepit white women…I
just attacked him and stomped him,” shares Mike Tyson in Tyson,
James Toback’s weirdly sympathetic documentary, told entirely in the
boxer’s own words. Sure, the guy Tyson “stomped” is Don King. But the
matter-of-fact way Tyson describes publicly beating a man before a host
of elderly onlookers as if it’s a perfectly normal thing to have done,
is equal parts disturbing and engrossing. It’s unclear whether Toback
intends the film as a Tyson exoneration, or simply a fascinating
character study of a troubled, complicated, monstrous man. It feels
like both.
This article appears in Aug 27 – Sep 2, 2009.
