"Tyson" documentary pulls no punches

A "Raging Bull" for the 21st century, James Toback's "Tyson" is a warts-and-all portrait of a sports legend.

The raw emotion that sustains Toback's uncompromising documentary comes mostly through the words of Mike Tyson himself, who is interviewed at several stages of his career. He rages; he weeps; he makes excuses for himself; and occasionally, when he's at his most vulnerable, he admits to failure.

A rotten childhood is cited as the basis for most of his mistakes. Bullied at school, robbed for change and physically humiliated because he was overweight, Tyson was drawn into the Brooklyn drug trade at an early age.

Alienated from a man he believed to be his father, Tyson was forced to look for father figures elsewhere. When he followed Errol Flynn's lead and made sexual conquests a priority, he faulted a "promiscuous environment."

His first childhood victory came when he fought back and defeated a kid who had killed one of his pet pigeons. A truly inspiring trainer, Gus D'Amato, gets most of the credit for instilling a sense of confidence in Tyson, for convincing him that he could "devastate the world" and triumph in the ring.

But when Tyson's marriage to Robin Givens fell apart after a Barbara Walters interview (amply and painfully excerpted here), he never fully recovered. It didn't help that "the whole world was in our business."

Arrested for the first time at the age of 12, the future boxing champion did a lot of time. When he visited a wealthy fan's Victorian mansion, his first instinct was to figure out how to burglarize the home. At one point he claims that "my insanity is my only sanity."

You may not feel great sympathy for Tyson by the time it's over, but the movie succeeds in demonstrating how he feels about the reasons behind his first marriage to Givens, his sometimes barbaric behavior in the ring and the rape charge that sent him to prison for three years (he denies his guilt).

More than most sports movies, "Tyson" suggests that "I think I can" has a great deal to do with success. Tyson is at the top of his game when he's sweating confidence, intimidating his opponents and announcing "I'm a god when I'm in the ring."

Toback frequently splits the screen to cut the visual monotony of so many close-ups of Tyson, but those close-ups are the heart of the movie. When Tyson finally admits defeat and announces retirement, it's those crinkly, hurting eyes you remember.

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com