"Tyson" Review · EDGe Vegas

I’ve read quite a few good reviews about “Tyson“; the documentary about Mike Tyson’s life. Everything I read was about how this was a very “real” look at his life. As I watched the movie I realized that this was indeed very real and a raw look at Tyson’s life.

Listening to Mike Tyson talk about growing up as a kid that was picked on and watching him grow into a bully himself and a petty thug was a little uncomfortable, but interesting. Even more uncomfortable to watch was Tyson talking about sex, violence and his marriage to Robin Givens.

As a boxing fan I was more interested in his relationship to Cus D’Amato. D’Amato was Tyson’s trainer and seems to be the person that saved Tyson from life in the hood. Tyson seemed to look up to D’Amato as his savior and a father figure. As he said “Cus broke me down and rebuilt me as a new person.”

Sure Tyson won the heavyweight championship after D’Amato died, but it seems as if Tyson began his downward spiral on D’Amato passed away.

In the latter part of the movie Tyson goes into graphic detail about getting whooped by Evander Holyfield, then biting Holyfield’s ear and the bad people he surrounded himself with. As the movie went on, it got more and more brutal.

The movie had a lot of quick cuts, which made it easy to watch and digest. This is definitely a well done movie that is easy to watch. This probably isn’t a movie I’d watch too often, but I don’t watch many movies more than once. I was happy to see the end of the movie because it started to get a little depressing. I’ve lived through most of this movie and it was great to see everything I’ve seen on the news in 90 minutes.