Undisputed is a prison boxing picture, and it’s got more glares and grimaces than any two Clint Eastwood movies combined. Ving Rhames and Wesley Snipes are the two challengers fighting for the right to call himself “undisputed.” Snipes is a lifer who hasn’t lost a boxing match yet on the prison circuit. Rhames is a Mike Tyson type, an uncontrollably violent heavyweight champ, sent to do time for raping his girlfriend. The inmates and guards do everything they can to arrange a fight between prison champ Snipes and world champ Rhames.
The picture, directed by Walter Hill, is full of testosterone and male posturing. Everyone acts so tough that you think you’re watching a Junior High bully convention. Rather than remaining a neutral observer, Hill encourages the posing by emphasizing the bars, the cages, and the razor wire. As each new character is introduced, Hill shows us a tough-looking freeze frame with the character’s name and crime, lettered by a hip graphic designer who probably thinks he’s tough too.
It would not be unfair to say that Undisputed glamorizes prison and boxing, two of the last things I’d want anyone to aspire to. Snipes and Rhames, two respectable actors, are wasted in this mess. Undisputed stinks like a prison locker room. Kids, stay in school and stay out of trouble or else you might be sentenced to watch this movie.