There are many times in a man's life when he realises that a one-time, universal yet life-changing occurrence crops up. It could be an epiphany, a moment of great realisation, where the events of the past and the direction of the future finally unmuddy themselves to provide crystal-clear guidance to the desperate or lost. Other times, it can be something as simple as the gut-wrenching moment you find that first grey hair in your sideburns or pubes. In this case, however, I have something far less welcome even than the grey pube; I have found what I believe to be my least favourite movie ever.
Ladies and gentlemen, that movie is Undisputed.
It sounds promising enough. Although the plot is simple, a seeming throwback to the early '90s (something that never bodes well for a film produced in 2002), it is pleasingly familiar, being a boxing-cum-prison drama where badboy world champion boxer George "Iceman" Chambers is sent to prison, whereupon friction with the current undefeated prison boxing champion Monroe Hutchen inevitably ensues. Easy enough, you may think, and all the ingredients are there for your classic underdog drama. World champion Iceman turns out to be an arrogant bully and thug, determined to beat seven shades of shit out of the slighter, mild-mannered (he even makes matchstick sculptures!) Hutchen in order to stamp his authority on the inmates he sees as beneath him; it is up to crowd favourite Hutchen to take him down a peg. The rest of the film only needs to flesh out the characters, get some tasty build-up scenes in, maybe a bit of prison violence, before culminating in a set-piece epic finish which is the true hallmark of a great boxing movie.
Unfortunately for my still-bleeding eyes, Undisputed fails on nearly every level as a film that is either interesting, entertaining or watchable. For starters, the characters possess the unenviable traits of being both instantly recognisable stereotypes and extremely hard to feel any kind of connection with. Iceman is so close to the vanilla 'Boxing Thug' it's tiresome; endlessly aggressive, remorselessly truculent, any layer of subtlety that would make the character a shade more interesting is lost in the constant angry shouting and violence that fills the screen upon his every appearance. The fact he is sent to prison for raping a woman could be the background for an interesting subplot, leaving the audience to judge whether or not he is in fact guilty, but it never progresses beyond him denying the charges in disgustingly macho style. Washington's Hutchen is no better, falling squarely into the category marked 'Badass Bookworm'; yet, far from possessing the full flavour of character such types often receive he is hardly developed at all beyond the aforementioned matchstick sculptures. Any sympathy or rooting-forness that the good guy in a boxing flick needs fails to materialise; the film makers seemed to decide that showing him doing something slightly arty and unexpected in a prison environment would be enough to establish him as an intelligent, float-like-a-butterly... type. Well, obviously they do to the extent that I can recognise it as a viewer, but I DON'T CARE as he remains extremely bland. Possessing neither the everyman-ness of a Rocky or the admirably hardcore good-guy-ness of a Gordon Freeman, his eventual big fight vs. his big rival leaves you caring very little.
The inmates of the prison are uniformly moronic, perpetuating the myths of the 'Code'/hive mind/actually not bad people! that every prison film embraces, and in this case we are shown no reason to either sympathise with their characters (some fairly ridiculous shows of heavy-handedness from the prison wardens are so unbelievable as to be insulting) or feel wonderment at their little behind-doors society. Good prison films (Shawshank Redemption) portray their jailbirds as essentially fallen humans, creating an interesting moral ambiguity within the viewer as they struggle with their simultaneously positive and negative feelings for what are often likeable characters. In Undisputed, they are either faceless, steroid-pumped loudmouths or ratty little wheeler-dealers who you consistently fail to notice as actually being important to the plot despite being in every scene, such is their relentless boringness.
The script is fuck*ng awful, frankly. I cannot remember a single line, but expect the usual diatribe about what it means to be a fighter etc. amongst perpetually stupid 'real prison talk'. I display more verbal gymnastics stabbing furiously at the keyboard after yet another night I fail to bring someone home and content myself with drunken postings on internet forums. The colours, cinematography and general niceness to view of the film all fail to achieve even basic competence, barely extending beyond monochrome prison colours and the directer, whoever he is, is not aware enough to exceed in this medium, as has been done before by many better films.
In short, it's shit shit shit, frankly I was shocked at the pathetic 1 hour 20 running time as it felt like 5 hours at only 20 minutes in. This lengthiness was by no means the result of plenty of content, how the film makers got more than 30 minutes out of their pathetic characters is a wonder, but the sheer mind-numbing crapulence of the viewing experience.
Andy, fuck you for making me watch it, film makers, your film is a cunt and you're a cunt, I hope wild hosss tear apart your film equipment.
Verdict, SHIT
Good day.
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Topic: wombat tries to watch movies again (Read 99778 times)