Tyson Reviewed, He is in Fact Crazy

The new Mike Tyson documentary, simply entitled Tyson, is opening this weekend to favorable reviews. Many feel that this is the closest we will ever get to understanding Tyson. Ironically that statement proves just how crazy the man is viewed by the general public.

Not all of the reviews are favorable though.

One of my favorite film critics, Dana Stevens of Slate, thinks that the film doesn't work precisely because Tyson is just plain bat-shit crazy,

 But as an interview subject, Mike Tyson is such an absurdly unreliable source, such a blend of self-aggrandizement, self-pity, manic self-disclosure, and barely suppressed rage, that spending an hour and a half alone in a room with him (even Toback, who presumably conducted the interviews, is never seen or heard) feels suffocatingly claustrophobic.    

Stevens is also none too pleased with the filmmakers take on Tyson's rape conviction, 

It's understandable that Tyson wouldn't want to linger on the circumstances that led to his rape conviction in 1992, for which he served three years in prison. But even if, as Toback has suggested in interviews, he believes Tyson was innocent, it's disgraceful how easily the director lets his subject off the hook with a single sentence about being falsely accused by "that wretched swine of a woman." If Toback believes Tyson's conviction was a setup, he's free to make that case, but simply dismissing the victim, Desiree Washington, with an insult makes the movie look like a creepy exercise in logrolling.    

I think this film is a DVD rental. Fascinating subject but not worth the money to see in film.