The result is a documentary that once again highlights that, of all sports, boxing is the one that cinema has been most successful in recording...

Full Review | May 15, 2018

Something draws us near-perhaps [James] Toback's own fascination, at once self-serving and empathetic, with his soft-spoken protagonist.

| Original Score: 3/6 | Nov 18, 2011

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Just relentless lisping monotonous speech that makes the prospect of entering the ring with Mike seem attractive if only because it will be over sooner.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 9, 2009

There is something compelling about the way he presents his version of the stories and scandals that surround him.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 7, 2009

He's amazingly frank about some of the people he doesn't like, and he breaks down when he talks about his friends and the people he loved. A surprisingly fine documentary.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 5, 2009

Half-appealing, half-pathetic.

Full Review | Jul 16, 2009

The most remarkable revelation of the movie is its subject's thoughtful, reflective eloquence and unflinching self-perception...Tyson may or may not be entirely who he says he is, but he's probably not who we thought he was, either.

| Jun 13, 2009

Some documentaries grow in the shadows; others demand to be made. The story of boxer Mike Tyson, powerfully recounted in a new film, is as rich as a Dickens novel.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 11, 2009

With no sense that Toback is pressing Tyson behind the camera, it's easy to see this as more of a puff piece propping up Tyson's sense of importance rather than any work of documentary filmmaking.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 17, 2009

Something of a cliché.

| Original Score: C+ | May 15, 2009

I can't say I've ever wanted to be in Mike Tyson's head, but this documentary by James Toback certainly took me there, and I won't soon forget it.

| May 15, 2009

When Tyson finally admits defeat and announces retirement, it's those crinkly, hurting eyes you remember.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 14, 2009

The closest most of us will ever come to an intimate chat with the champ.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 14, 2009

More a testimony for the defense than a documentary, it's a sympathetic portrait of a complex man driven by an anger that still bubbles beneath the surface.

Full Review | May 8, 2009

Hypnotic and ultimately incomplete.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 8, 2009

Toback, to his considerable credit, turns that view around by showing Tyson as a complicated person who has more thoughtful things to say.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 8, 2009

With Tyson, [director James] Toback has found a documentary subject as tragic and ridiculous, as bizarre and driven, as the heroes of his other films.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 8, 2009

Toback fashions a sharp doc out of a blunt object.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 8, 2009

Deploying multiple split screens and a discreet but effective score, Tyson is hugely engrossing at the same time that it is not entirely credible.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 7, 2009