'Undisputed' explores 'what if' a younger prison champ had challenged Mike Tyson

Friday, August 23, 2002

By WILLIAM ARNOLD
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

The name of writer-director Walter Hill is now all but forgotten in Hollywood, but it used to stand for a distinctive brand of moody, surrealistically violent action film in the vein of "The Driver" (1978), "The Warriors" (1979) and "Streets of Fire" (1984).

MOVIE REVIEW

UNDISPUTED

DIRECTOR: Walter Hill

CAST: Wesley Snipes, Ving Rhames, Peter Falk

RUNNING TIME: 90 minutes

RATING: R for pugilistic violence

WHERE: Auburn Cinema 17, Bella Bottega, East Valley, Everett 1-3, Galleria, Grand Cinemas, Lewis & Clark, Pacific Place

GRADE: B

In "Undisputed," Hill's first credited theatrical film in more than eight years, he's back to his old tricks with an outrageous but fairly irresistible roman a clef that evokes some of the best moments of his auteur efforts in the '70s and '80s.

Blending the conventions of both the boxing and the prison movie genres, his film explores the possibilities of what might have happened if, unknown to the outer world, heavyweight champ Mike Tyson had been challenged by a talented young inmate-boxer while he was in stir.

The Tyson character is George "Iceman" Chambers (Ving Rhames), a strutting, hot-tempered, Neanderthal-ish brute of a prizefighter who is genuinely surprised to find himself in a maximum-security facility in the Mojave Desert for date-raping a protesting young woman.

In the other corner is Monroe Hutchen (Wesley Snipes), a younger, faster prison champ, who has a Zen Buddhist approach to life and seems to be just as happy building pagodas out of toothpicks as pounding his ring opponents into submission.

When the Iceman starts out his stretch by rudely dissing the popular Monroe, the wily old con boss (Peter Falk) gets the idea of a secret grudge match between the pair, inviting various mob figures and Las Vegas high rollers to watch and wager on the outcome.

Sprinkled into this improbable plot are all the conventions of both the sports movie and the modern prison drama -- a strange brew of exhilarating "Rocky" sequences with crooked wardens, sadistic guards and neo-Nazi/Black Muslim political maneuverings.

In his opening scenes, Hill has unnecessarily speeded up his traditional pace a notch or two to perhaps look MTV-modern. But his old hand gradually takes hold to give us a stylish but steady, and ultimately very satisfying, piece of character-driven storytelling.

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

He's supposed to be the bad guy, but his inexorable ferocity just eats up the movie, and Hill gives him a smoldering Nietzschean dignity.