There are certain qualities I look for in the people that I call my friends. Loyalty is important. Sense of humor is a must. People who are fast and loose with compliments and/or money never hurt and are always welcome. But above all of that I prize humility in my compatriots. And an important extension of humility is the capacity for self-deprecation. Not demoralizing rants of, "I'm a loser and no one likes me!" but they should be able to poke a little fun at themselves. And they should be able to have a little fun poked at them by others without flying off the handle. I believe "being able to take it and dish it out" is an admirable quality. It just makes for a more enjoyable friendship. And I also feel it makes for a more enjoyable movie watching experience when the actors have this quality. I said in my review of Diggstown that one of the things I liked most about James Woods, Bruce Dern, and Lou Gossett Jr. was their flair for comedy and that they don't mind poking a little fun at themselves. And that brings me to the central point of this review:
Wesley Snipes has lost the ability to make fun of himself.
Mr. Snipes used to be exactly the type of actor I found appealing. I could sit and watch him in "Major League" and laugh at his double takes and naïveté, all the while believing that he was a real major league ballplayer. And I found him just as enjoyable in serious fare, like "Jungle Fever" or "New Jack City". Sidney Deane, Simon Phoenix, Nino Brown. . he BECAME these people, and I found his versatility astounding. Then it all changed in 1998. Wesley found the weight room, started doing fewer interviews. Next thing you know he's a 5th degree blackbelt and he wants to be called "Blade" on set so he can stay in character. It's not the first time this has happened. It's the "Superhero Effect". Look at Michael Keaton. He was "Mr. Mom", and then he put on the cape, the hood, and the utility belt and lost his sense of humor for 7 years (he started to lighten up in '94 with "The Paper", but he wasn't completely out of the woods until 1996's "Multiplicity"). So the good news is we've only got about a year of Super Wesley left (although, he did 2 "Blade" sequels, while Keaton only did 1 more "Batman", so that might throw the equation off...). Until then, we have to endure more stuff like "Undisputed".
Monroe Hutchins (Snipes) is the reigning, undefeated, UNDISPUTED (eh, right?!) heavyweight champion of Sweetwater Prison. Jailed for committing murder in a fit of passion, he's now the Zen Master of cell block C, spending his time training and, inexplicably, building complicated structures out of toothpicks and glue. I'd like to tell you more about Monroe, but he ain't saying much, and the movie is saying even less. Just call him "one tough dude", compliment him on his toothpick sculpture, and leave it at that, OK?
The placidity of Sweetwater Prison is broken with the arrival of the "real" heavyweight champ, Iceman Chambers (Rhames). The Iceman has been convicted of rape. He denies it, but we're given the impression that even "no" might mean "yes" to the Iceman, and any sympathy for him immediately evaporates. The connection to Mike Tyson is drawn about as subtly as a poke in the eye (Rhames's Iceman is definitely more eloquent than Iron Mike, even after the GED). He quickly makes it clear that he's not to be messed with by beating up any skinhead or gangbanger that gets within an arm's length of him. He says there's only room for one heavyweight champion in this prison, which puts him at odds with everyone else at Sweetwater, and pretty much kills any chance of him and Monroe Hutchins ever being buddies. He even sucker punches Monroe in the cafeteria, and it is, as they say, on.
Up to this point, which was about 20 minutes in, I thought that we might be in for a breakthrough here. I mean, the characters were being drawn so broadly they bordered on caricatures. Iceman = Bad, Monroe = Good, let's get it on! But I should have known better. Every chance that the movie had to poke fun at itself or lighten the mood was passed up for more demonizing of Iceman and more introspective shots of Monroe. They strung it out for a full hour, stopping just short of having to show Monroe doing Tai-Chi while the Iceman strangled kittens to make the point more succinctly. All of this overwrought faux-tension building made the ending a foregone conclusion. Why even bother with the fight at the end? The only breaks we got from the countdown to the fight are in the form of Peter Falk. Falk plays a mentally-addled gangster who wants to help make the highly unlikely prison fight a reality with his mob influence. I'm not sure whether he was meant to be comic relief here, but if you find Colombo dropping f-bombs every other second funny, you're in for a treat. If he was meant to be a stoic, no-nonsense presence in the film, then he failed miserably.
I really don't think any further explanation of the plot and how it unfurls is necessary. Even at 86 minutes long, this movie feels padded. By fight night, it's almost interminable. You can honestly watch the first 20 minutes and then shut it off. Anyone who can't see how this baby is gonna end up might be due for a catscan. The inevitable Iceman/Monroe match by movie's end has just enough goofy elements to it that you might be fooled into thinking that the whole thing was supposed to be played for laughs. But by the very end it's made perfectly clear that it's all dead serious and that Wesley Snipes is not be be laughed at.
Ever. |
