Movies: Tyson

Plot and Duck watched "Tyson" last night. Actually, Plot watched, transfixed at this extraordinarily complicated psychotic who also happened to be the most intimidating person Plotnik has ever seen, as well as the boxing Heavyweight Champion of the World by age 20.

Ducknik mostly snoozed. But Plot couldn't take his eyes off this guy. What a movie. Netflix it if you dare.

A few nights ago they watched "Brokeback Mountain" that Plotnik expected to hate but was transfixed by. Duck loved it too. There were certain incomprehensible things in the plot that made no sense, but the way the two men were drawn not only to each other but towards the wilderness and away from their miserable lives at home made a lot of sense.

Not along ago Plot and Duck saw "Sin Nombre" which taught them both that the Spanish slang spoken by gangsters on the Guatemala border is as incomprehensible to them as the English slang spoken by gangsters on 19th and Mission. And the plot was 'way too simplistic, but, like Tyson, you kind of couldn't stop watching it, awaiting the inevitable destruction at the end.

Plot's friend Bill Leeman reviews movies. He hated "Crazy Heart," despised it in fact, the new movie with Jeff Bridges playing the drunken country music star. Plot figured he would hate that one too so he's avoiding it.

The only "music movie" Plotnik can remember liking in years was "Ray."

But those movies are movies. Tyson feels like life. The scariest thing about it is Tyson himself, perhaps not all that different from a lot of people who grew up the way he did. His friend James Toback shot the film, featuring an older Tyson talking about all the lunacy of his past, his childhood in Brownsville, his early career as a burglar, how discovering boxing saved him from ending up dead or in jail like the rest of his friends, and then his incredible success, and then his equally incredible fall, and a divorce, and a conviction for rape and three years in jail, and the comeback, leading to a conclusion with the two fights against Evander Holyfeld when Tyson was so filled with hatred and anger that he actually tried to bite Holyfeld's ear off.

Imagine Pacino's "Scarface," but more intense because Mike Tyson isn't acting.

Tyson talks over the footage of those fights -- he says he hated Holyfeld so much he wanted to kill him, to destroy him, to kill his children and everyone in his corner. In that context biting the man almost makes sense, though it cost Tyson his license as a prizefighter and isn't easy to watch in the ring either.

It's so contradictory. When you see footage of this absolutely terrifying man with the Maori tattoos on his face, stalking through the crowd to enter the ring, and you hear Tyson years later, in his high voice with that soft, amazing lisp, talking about how he was actually scared to death at that moment and before every one of his fights, it's hard to square what you are seeing with what you are hearing. The older live Tyson, the Tyson the documentary producers are interviewing, seems like an intelligent person, understanding of his own failures and deeply disappointed in himself, the young Tyson.

So Plotnik turns off the TV, wakes up the Duck, and thinks that Mike Tyson wasn't the beast he was made out to be, and that he was also even worse. And for a short time he was probably the best boxer in boxing history, and then he was an out of work bum.

Warning: when Mike Tyson stares at you in the movie you will have to turn your eyes away. You will. He is that scary. And so's the film.