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Tyson

  • 20082008
  • RR
  • 1h 30m
IMDb RATING
7.4/10
13K
YOUR RATING
Tyson (2008)
A mixture of original interviews, archival footage, and photographs sheds light on the life experiences of Mike Tyson.
Play trailer2:12
2 Videos
47 Photos
DocumentaryBiographySport
A mixture of original interviews, archival footage, and photographs sheds light on the life experiences of Mike Tyson.A mixture of original interviews, archival footage, and photographs sheds light on the life experiences of Mike Tyson.A mixture of original interviews, archival footage, and photographs sheds light on the life experiences of Mike Tyson.
IMDb RATING
7.4/10
13K
YOUR RATING
    • James Toback
    • James Toback
  • Stars
    • Mike Tyson
    • Mills Lane(archive footage)
    • Trevor Berbick(archive footage)
    • James Toback
    • James Toback
  • Stars
    • Mike Tyson
    • Mills Lane(archive footage)
    • Trevor Berbick(archive footage)
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 64User reviews
    • 108Critic reviews
    • 83Metascore
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards

    Videos2

    Tyson
    Trailer 2:12
    Watch Tyson
    Tyson
    Clip 1:18
    Watch Tyson

    Photos47

    Mike Tyson and James Toback in Tyson (2008)
    Mike Tyson and James Toback in Tyson (2008)
    Mike Tyson in Tyson (2008)
    Mike Tyson in Tyson (2008)
    Mike Tyson in Tyson (2008)
    Mike Tyson in Tyson (2008)
    Mike Tyson in Tyson (2008)
    Mike Tyson in Tyson (2008)
    Mike Tyson in Tyson (2008)
    Mike Tyson in Tyson (2008)
    Mike Tyson in Tyson (2008)
    Mike Tyson in Tyson (2008)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Mike Tyson
    Mike Tyson
    • Self
    Mills Lane
    Mills Lane
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
    Trevor Berbick
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
    Cus D'Amato
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
    William Cayton
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
    Jim Jacobs
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
    Joe Louis
    Joe Louis
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
    Max Schmeling
    Max Schmeling
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
    Jack Dempsey
    Jack Dempsey
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
    Gene Tunney
    Gene Tunney
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
    Rocky Marciano
    Rocky Marciano
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
    Muhammad Ali
    Muhammad Ali
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
    Carl Williams
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
    Larry Holmes
    Larry Holmes
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
    Tyrell Biggs
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
    Tony Tubbs
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
    Henry Tillman
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
    Jose Nino Ribalta
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
      • James Toback
      • James Toback
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      To gage what effect "Tyson" would have on audiences, James Toback asked the opinions of the film's opposite demographic: older white women who were disinterested in boxing. He asked that they come to his editing suite and watch the film. If they left after 5 minutes, Toback would give them $100 USD. If they stayed after 5 minutes, they would have to stay for the whole picture - and give Toback extensive feedback on the film. According to Toback, not one woman left after 5 minutes, and many were in tears by the film's finale.
    • Quotes

      Mike Tyson: While I'm in the dressing room five minutes before I come out, I'm breaking my gloves down, I'm pushing the leather to the back of my gloves, so my knuckle could pierce through. When I come out I have supreme confidence. I'm scared to death. I'm afraid. I'm afraid of everything. I m afraid of losing. I'm afraid of being humiliated. But I'm confident. The closer I get to the ring the more confident I get. The closer, the more confident. The closer, the more confident I get. All during training I've been afraid of this man. I think, this man might be capable of beating me. I've dreamed of him beating me. For that I've always stayed afraid of him. The closer I get to the ring the more confident I get. Once I'm in the ring I'm a god. No one could beat me. I walk around the ring, but I never take my eyes off my opponent. Even if he's ready and pumping, and can't wait to get his hands on me. I keep my eyes on him. I keep my eyes on him. Then once I see a chink in his armor, boom, one of his eyes may move, and then I know I have him. Then once he comes to the center of the ring he looks at me with his piercing look as if he's not afraid. But he already made that mistake when he looked down for that one tenth of a second. I know I have him. He'll fight hard for the first two or three rounds, but I know I broke his spirit. During the fight I'm supremely confident. I'm making him miss and I'm countering. I'm hitting him to the body; I'm punching him real hard. And I'm punching him, and I'm punching him, and I know, he's gonna take my punches. He goes down, he's out. I m victorious. Mike Tyson, greatest fighter that ever lived.

    • Connections
      Edited into The Rotten Tomatoes Show: 17 Again/State of Play/Crank High Voltage (2009)
    • Soundtracks
      Legendary
      Written by NaS

      Performed by NaS

    User reviews64

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    9/10
    no-holds-barred therapy session as much as biased documentary
    I wouldn't want to be Mike Tyson, not in a million years or for a million dollars, at any stage of his life. He grew up on the mean, poor streets of Brooklyn, stole and robbed in his young teen years, got sent to Juvenile Hall and then was trained by Cus D'Amato, famous and talented boxing trainer, and then became a boxing machine in the ring only to see his self-confidence and inner demons take over him as he saw everything crumble around him. At least, that's what James Toback's film on Tyson would want us to believe, or have us hear him out on anyway.

    What's clever, and most absorbing, about Tyson is that it doesn't ask us to see all of the truth in the facts in this man's life, but that there may be some truth in this man's own self-analysis. We get no other voice in the film to contradict or say otherwise what Tyson himself says in looking back (we see old videos of what other people have said about him, be it boxing announcers to the infamous interview Robin Givens gave to Barbara Walters with Tyson sitting next to her). He's not exactly a very "good" man even by his own estimation, but if there's one thing that he'd want to get out in the open, by his own admission, he's trying, Lord how he's trying.

    The interviews, done as Mike Tyson was getting himself cleaned up of drugs and alcohol, are shot in the face-to-camera approach of Errol Morris, but there's another influence I wonder if Toback was tooling with which is Robert Altman. This may be the only documentary I can think of where the one and only interviewee's dialog and words overlap each other in most cases. This is very effective, such as when Tyson is talking about his time in prison for rape and we hear and see his various memories of the experience overlapping one another. This, plus a strongly edited split-screen effect, creates a kind of prism-vision of Mike Tyson in this very focused portrayal of the man, myth, legend himself.

    It's self-confession and a history lesson. For someone who hasn't followed all of Tyson's career and personal life the former is put into good light. I learned almost all I needed to know about Tyson as a boxer from this film. As a human being that may be another matter. He is honest about himself, as if in a therapy session, but to what degree (even to his friend of 20 years, the director) is hard to say. But this only adds to the interest; how much his trainer's death in the mid 80s really had on him as a boxer is really hard to say, since he contradicts himself as saying he was never the same after his death, losing his already fragile self-confidence, while also becoming one of the dominant presences in boxing in the 20th century in the late 80s and early 90s.

    What one gets from this film is something rare in documentary, which is no-BS bias. We get no other point of view but this subjective portrait, which is sometimes harsh on himself and sometimes, arguably, not harsh enough. For those who only know of the crazy-ass Tyson (i.e. "I'm gonna f*** you till you love me" quotes) one can see him open up on his own past of being so afraid and with such a lack of self-esteem that this profession he chose was the only logical way to go aside from death or in prison for longer than that of his rape conviction (which, true to subjective portrait, he still denies to this day).

    It's not perfect as a documentary, and there are a couple of points I groaned inside from Toback's artistic choice, most notably the shots of Tyson walking on a beach at sunset with some poetry narration (that's right, Tyson breaking out the stanzas) that feel so against the hardcore personal nature of the rest of the picture. It's like we're all collective psychiatric interpreters of this incredibly flawed once-truly-great fighter, and at the least there's nothing else like it in boxing film history or just in theaters now in general. 9.5/10
    helpful•16
    2
    • Quinoa1984
    • May 22, 2009

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    Details

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    • Release date
      • May 15, 2009 (United States)
      • United States
      • France
      • Official site
      • English
    • Also known as
    • Production companies
      • Fyodor Productions
      • Defiance Entertainment
      • Green Room Films
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

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    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

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    • 1 hour 30 minutes
      • Color
      • Dolby Digital

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