Mike Tyson pulls no punches in documentary

In the 91-minute pugilistic passion play,audiences will discover a man steeped in self-recriminations,apparently sincerely struggling,at 42,to figure out who he is and how he nearly allowed his demons to destroy him. “Darkness is very alluring,” Tyson says,“We call it,where I come from,dancing with the devil.”
Tyson becomes a harrowing travelogue into one man’s inner Ninth Circle. Yet the film convinces us that,in contrast to his coarse,almost cartoonish popular persona,Tyson can be a thoughtful,insightful and eloquent warrior. “He has a poetic sensibility,” says Toback.

Toback and Tyson met on the set of the director’s The Pick-up Artist (1987). It was Toback’s idea for Tyson to narrate the movie in a stream-of-consciousness style. The filmmaker stayed out of his subject’s sightline while asking him open-ended questions such as,“What are your feelings about sex?” Lisping,blurting out his deepest insecurities and occasionally wiping tears,Tyson emerges as a conflicted,emotionally outsized man-child in the pummelled land. “It’s like a portrait of these great,tortured artists like Gaugin and Van Gogh,” Toback says.

Tyson spends a fair amount of the film’s second half beating up on himself. “I have to beat up on myself,” he says,“because nobody else will… I’m an out-of-shape,washed-up boxer… And my life,everything that I knew,the life that I once knew is just dead… I don’t think about that.” Tyson says he’s concentrating on trying to be a good father and staying clean and out of trouble. “Being at home on the couch every day,having my girlfriend cooking food,playing with my baby… I can’t get in no trouble.”
_Reed Johnson,LATWP