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Call me petty, but whenever I see Ving Rhames, all that springs to mind is him crying like a little girl when he won the Golden Globe for the Don King television biopic. Perhaps my reluctance to accept him as a tough guy in Undisputed is the reason I didn't like this film.
Oh, who am I kidding? There are plenty of other reasons not to like Undisputed. For starters, it combines two genres that are pretty played out - the prison drama and the boxing flick. I guess it's somewhat of a match made in heaven, since prison is filled with lowlifes, cheats and other corrupt types, just like boxing.
Undisputed is set entirely within Sweetwater Prison, a Level 5 maximum-security state prison located in the Mojave Desert. There are two things that make Sweetwater unique: It's home to only the most dangerous murderers and rapists our country has to offer (so regular prison won't be as scary for the Enron and Adelphia guys, I guess); and it's also the site of a California penal system experiment in which boxing matches are held every six months for the entertainment of the prisoners. These fights usually pit one Sweetwater skell against a criminal from another jail in Cali's system.
The current and undefeated champion of Sweetwater is murderer Monroe Hutchen (Wesley Snipes, Blade 2), who we see in the film's first scene as he beats the snot out of a big, bald white guy with swastika tattoos (but of course), even though the skinhead is twice his size. Monroe used to be a ranked heavyweight contender, but that was 10 years ago, before he started killing people.
Even before Monroe's fight is over, Sweetwater is abuzz with rumors that the Iceman cometh. This Iceman isn't Kevin Spacey but James "Iceman" Chambers (Rhames, Baby Boy), the reigning heavyweight champion of the world who was just stripped of his belts after a recent rape conviction. Please - you know where this is going. Undisputed's final reel will feature a fight between Monroe and Iceman, in which you will be forced to root for either a rapist or a murderer (or, if you're like me, you'll just sit there and wait for the credits to roll).
Undisputed landed in the public spotlight earlier this year when test audiences, though enjoying the film, complained about Snipes' character being too unlikable. When the studio attempted to make Monroe more sensitive to the film's potential white viewers, Snipes refused to do re-shoots. Short of replacing him with Owen Wilson, I'm not sure there's anything you can do to make him more appealing.
There isn't too much else going on here, though writer-director Walter Hill (he co-wrote with David Giler) tries to generate excitement with supporting roles filled by the likes of Peter Falk, Michael Rooker and Fisher Stevens, the latter of whom plays a rat-like sidekick to Monroe (Steve Buscemi was too busy making his own prison flick - Animal Factory). Falk does have a funny scene where he rattles off enough expletives to make Master P blush (he performs the national anthem before the big fight).
Still, Undisputed is all about the fight, and everything else just gets in the way. Hill shoots it through the ring's steel cage, which, at times, might make you think the theatre projectionist is napping because the top and bottom of the screen appear to be lopped off. Coming on the heels of Ali, these boxing scenes are not at all spectacular. There are nice title overlays that introduce each character and gives their reason for incarceration, along with other pertinent data. So if you're into quality title overlays, then you won't want to miss this one.
1:30 - R for strong language
========== X-RAMR-ID: 32994 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 755575 X-RT-TitleID: 1116612 X-RT-SourceID: 595 X-RT-AuthorID: 1146 X-RT-RatingText: 4/10
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