Review: Undisputed

Set in Sweetwater maximum security prison in California, we follow two boxers; Wesley Snipes’ Monroe Hutchens (all cool, detached arrogance) and Ving Rhames’ ‘Iceman’ Chambers (all swagger and intimidating badass arrogance) as they are set to collide and determine who is the undisputed champ. The former has spent the last ten years honing his skills behind bars and has a 67-0 record in prison-sanctioned fights to go with his life sentence for a moment of uncontrolled anger. Meanwhile, ‘Iceman’ was still the Heavyweight Champion of the world before being convicted and incarcerated for rape (he says he’s innocent of course), and has now been sent to Sweetwater in disgrace. The two try their best to downplay any feelings of being threatened by one another, with the supremely arrogant ‘Iceman’ not really taking the prison boxer all that seriously, whilst Hutchens sits alone in his cell making complicated structures out of toothpicks and looking all Zen-like. Observing it all is foul-mouthed aging mobster Peter Falk, who is a long-time scholar of the ‘sweet science’ and still holds sway inside and outside the prison walls. Michael Rooker is the prison guard who acts as referee for the fights, Wes Studi plays Rhames’ cellmate, whilst Fisher Stevens plays your typical little runt prisoner that every prison movie has to have.

Rock-solid 2002 blend of prison movie and boxing movie from filmmaker Walter Hill (“The Warriors”, “48 HRS”, “Streets of Fire”) probably spends more time with foul-mouthed Falk than I would’ve liked. Falk is memorable, sure, but very broad and very profane. More scenes with the enigmatic Snipes certainly would’ve helped (not to mention the talented Wes Studi and Michael Rooker), and some won’t like that neither fighter is shown to be an entirely good or bad guy.

Snipes (whose character was verging on being a contender before he was imprisoned) and Rhames are both excellent (especially the latter) and the film is still highly watchable and entertaining in an old-fashioned B-movie kinda way. Sometimes that’ll do, and that is the case here, even though I’m not much of a boxing guy. I just think that Hill’s decision to give us little subtitle information (who they are, what they’re in for, etc.) about each of the characters instead of actually giving us real character depth hurts the film a bit.

Definitely one of Hill’s better B-movies of the last couple of decades, even if it’s a bit of a stretch to think of Snipes and Rhames fighting in the same weight division (Seriously, have you seen Rhames? If it were martial arts, black belt Snipes might have a shot, but surely not the ‘sweet science’). Scripted by Hill and David Giler (“Aliens”, “Skin Game”) the film certainly lays on the Mike Tyson allusions awfully thick with Rhames’ character (even having a Robin Givens-like character tell-all in a tabloid TV interview- real subtle, Walter. Real subtle), without really laying judgement on him.

Rating: B-