From What Movie Is the Phrase Hit Me Again Master From
| Undisputed | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release affiche | |
| Directed past | Walter Hill |
| Written by |
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| Produced past |
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| Starring |
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| Cinematography | Lloyd Ahern 2 |
| Edited by |
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| Music by | Stanley Clarke |
| Production |
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| Distributed by | Miramax Films |
| Release appointment |
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| Running time | 93 minutes |
| State | U.s. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $xv-$twenty one thousand thousand [1] [2] |
| Box office | $15,220,548[2] 64,579 admissions (France)[three] |
Undisputed is a 2002 American sports drama film written, produced and directed by Walter Loma. The film stars Wesley Snipes, Ving Rhames, Peter Falk, Michael Rooker, Jon Seda, Wes Studi, Fisher Stevens, and Master P.
Undisputed was released in the United States on August 23, 2002. The moving-picture show performed poorly at the box-office and received mixed reviews from critics; all the same information technology later found success in the domicile video market.
Plot [edit]
Heavyweight boxing champion George 'The Iceman' Chambers (Ving Rhames) is convicted of statutory rape and sentenced to Sweetwater, a new prison in the desert. The high-security facility is populated by hardened criminals. Unaware of the prison house's ways and its unique hierarchy, the pompous and bratty Chambers tries to impress upon the inmates his status as a champion boxer.
The prison camp, within its own walls, has a riveting competition on which a betting syndicate thrives. Criminals fight in boxing matches with very lax rules, thus making it a very addictive and lucrative venture for the syndicate. The well-nigh popular boxer backside bars is Sweetwater's undefeated Monroe "Undisputed" Hutchen (Wesley Snipes), who ends upward in solitary solitude after Chambers picks a fight with him in the mess hall. Flashbacks to Hutchen's own boxing career shows that he had been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for beating to death a homo who was sleeping with his girlfriend.
Sensing the brewing hatred for the heavyweight champion, an incarcerated mob boss named Ripstein (Peter Falk) senses potential in a match betwixt the pocket-sized Hutchen and the egomaniacal Chambers. Ripstein, a lifelong battle fan, proposes a match and Warden Lipscomb (Arndt) is persuaded to look the other style.
As all the arrangements are finally organized, an eagerly awaited fight night arrives. Chambers knocks downwards Hutchen twice (and with the London Prize Band Rules, each knockdown counts as the end of a circular, as the boxer is given merely 60 seconds to get up.) In the third round, Hutchens charges dorsum and knocks Chambers down for the first time in his career, sending the crowd of prisoners into a frenzy. Finally, in the fourth round Hutchen officially KO'due south Chambers to go the undisputed champion.
Ripstein'southward Mexican assistant reveals in a phonation over that Ripstein died three hours after the fight, simply in his will, he left him $2,000,000. Chambers was released on parole, and Hutchens received the money for his sister, who was experiencing hardship on the outside.
Information technology is also revealed that Chambers and his manager denied that the fight with Hutchen ever occurred, and that it was all a rumor. Months later on, Chambers wins back the Heavyweight Championship of the Earth. The whole cell block watches the televised fight, and laugh and cheer Monroe'southward name after hearing Chambers being crowned the 'undisputed' heavyweight champion of the world.
Cast [edit]
- Wesley Snipes as Monroe "Undisputed" Hutchen
- Ving Rhames as George "The Iceman" Chambers
- Peter Falk every bit Mendy Ripstein
- Michael Rooker as Captain A.J. Mercker
- Jon Seda as Jesus "Chuy" Campos
- Wes Studi as Mingo Pace
- Fisher Stevens as James "Ratbag" Kroycek
- Master P every bit Gat Boyz Rapper 1
- Silkk the Shocker as Gat Boyz Rapper two
- C-Murder as Gat Boyz Rapper three
- Ed Lover as Marvin Bonds
- Byron Minns as Eddie Jones / Saladin
- Steve Heinze as Carlos
- Michael Bailey Smith as Willard Bechtel
- Nils Allen Stewart as Vern Van Zant
- Johnathan Wesley Wallace as Antoine Bonet
- Johnny Williams every bit Al
- Joe D'Angerio as Vinnie
- Dayton Callie as Yank Lewis
- Denis Arndt every bit Warden Lipscomb
- Bruce A. Young as Charles Soward
- Amy Aquino as Darlene Early
- Taylor Young as Emily Byrne
- Susan Dalian as Jonelle Hutchen
- Rose Rollins equally Tawnee Rawlins
- Sandra Vidal as Fight Fan
- Peter Jason equally Oakland Telly Announcer
- Maureen O'Boyle as Herself
- Jim Lampley as Himself
Product [edit]
Evolution and writing [edit]
The picture show was based on an original script past Walter Hill and David Giler. Hill had just come up off the science fiction film Supernova on which he had been recut by Francis Ford Coppola among others. "Ane, information technology was embarrassing and, two, it made me think about quitting," said Hill. "While Coppola's intentions were honorable, I recollect he made a bad state of affairs worse. I didn't do anything for a year. I was fortunate plenty that I could buy my children a hot lunch. So, I decided I wanted to work again."[4]
Hill had e'er wanted to brand a battle film, being a fan of the sport since he was young. "Battle is easy to indict," says Loma. "There are a lot of terrible things about boxing. Withal, that'due south but one side of the coin. The other side is that boxing has a power and a dazzler and a drama and fascination that makes it a very compelling sport."[four]
Hill and Giler were having lunch one twenty-four hour period and discussed Mike Tyson, who was sentenced to prison house for rape in 1992. Giler said they thought "information technology's amazing how no studio has made a flick out of this basic situation of the heavyweight champion of the globe going to prison, the toughest environment in the globe," said Giler.[four] Hill went and wrote some paragraphs well-nigh the idea then he and Giler wrote a full script.[five]
However Colina says while the Tyson case was the departure point, "There are a number of prize fighters who take been in trouble with the police force. Our story looks at how a tough guy and glory would handle life in prison. The more we wrote, the more we wrote abroad from the Tyson story."[6] Hill says he was actually interested in what happened when "a heavyweight champion goes to the toughest environment possible in American culture, the American prison system."[7]
"What we tried to show is how, under odd circumstances, a bedevilled murderer and a convicted rapist are capable of a moment of grace," said Hill. "They're both heroic."[four]
The film refuses to say if the champion boxer was actually guilty. "It is absolutely ambiguous in this moving picture, cryptic in the sense that it is very clear that he believes himself to be innocent. It is as well absolutely clear that the woman involved believes herself to have been driveling and raped... If you want to know what I suspect, I suspect they're both right. It has to do with different terms, different values and different agreement of the basic meaty when men and women become to bed together."[iv]
Casting [edit]
Loma said the film needed to be bandage with black actors to accept "serious credibility,"[8] and that he "was determined non to accept a pic where it looked like the actors couldn't box."[7] He took the treatment to Wesley Snipes who was interested in the story even earlier the script had been written. "I told him it was conceivable that he could play either [lead] role, just what volition non change is the fight and who wins in the end," Loma said.[viii]
Colina then sent the script to Ving Rhames, who called back the next day, proverb he wanted to play the Water ice Man; Snipes was happy to play the other role.[eight] Rhames was in peak physical status having been preparing for two years to star in a film about Sonny Liston, Dark Railroad train, that ultimately was never made.[9] He said that Undisputed was "not Rocky... It's non clear-cutting who y'all're supposed to root for."[6] He had worked together with Snipes on Broadway earlier, the terminal time in 1986 in The Boys of Wintertime.
Information technology was a boxing to get the film financed with two black stars, particularly equally the film need to appeal to international audiences. "There was a lot of pressure level to change one of the characters to be white," Giler said, "but we thought it would be unrealistic... Nosotros haven't seen a white fighter of merit since Rocky Marciano."[5] Hill said that "heavyweight battle inside the past fifty years has been the purview of blackness men with a couple of tiny exceptions. This is a picture show nigh boxing and then we wanted to get it correct. I think that the thought of the heavyweight champion of the globe not being a blackness human would seem extraordinary. Simply if you did cast a black man equally the heavyweight champion and then out him into a prison where the prison house champion is white guy - well, what are nosotros talking about?"[5] There was too pressure to brand the picture less "tough".[v]
Snipes recalled, "The film was on. It was off. The money came. The coin fell out. Every mean solar day, it was a wonder we were making this movie. Then, after nosotros made the film, nobody knew whether it was always going to come out."[v] He prepared for the role by training with Emanuel Steward, who had trained 29 globe champions, including Wladimir Klitschko, Tommy Hearns and Lennox Lewis. "[My character] was supposed to exist the best," Snipes said, "so if I've got to look like the best, and live up to this grapheme, I've got to become the best and work with the all-time."[7] Rhames was already in peak condition due to preparing for the aborted Liston film; the flick's fight choreographer Cole McKay took over training of Rhames once filming began.
Filming [edit]
Undisputed was going to be filmed in a closed-down prison in Jean, Nevada. Still, according to Jeanne Corcoran, the Nevada Motion picture Part'south production manager, the prison "didn't have the right look. It has a smashing fence, a skillful tower, but the interiors tend to be more dormitory-similar."[9] Instead information technology was decided to shoot the film in an unopened wing of the medium-security High Desert State Prison house in Indian Springs, Nevada.[ix]
Shooting took identify in Jan and February 2001. The movie was shot over 39 days with finance raised from a number of American and European companies.[ane]
During the final fight, Snipes weighed only 178 pounds while Rhames was around 220 pounds. To mask the disparity, fight choreographer Cole McKay had Snipes fight upright and Rhames hunch forward in a crouching stance. For the terminal fight, Snipes said he and McKay would "choreograph half dozen or 7 movements and then we'd improvise. We improvised the tail-end of each round, and that gave a certain amount of spontaneity and reality to information technology."[vii]
Neither role player used a body double, and all of the trunk shots are real. "Everybody on the gear up was wanting to run into, 'Man who's going to win the fight?' " Steward recalls. "In that location were no 'John Wayne punches' in this movie at all. Information technology was the closest that I take e'er saw to real fightin'. I was mad because we didn't have [someone] to knock out for existent."[vii]
Hill afterward said, "Some say Hollywood movies that are made about boxing are just metaphors for other things, I call back I've made one that's really about battle and not a metaphor."[8]
Post-production [edit]
Distribution rights were purchased by Miramax Films for a reported $iv.5 million.[10] At that place were press reports that Miramax head Harvey Weinstein wanted additional scenes reshot which made Wesley Snipes more than sympathetic, merely that Snipes refused to exercise them.[eleven]
Music [edit]
Soundtrack [edit]
A soundtrack containing hip hop music was released on March five, 2002, by Universal Records. It peaked at No. 101 on the Billboard 200 and #41 on the Pinnacle R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.
Reception [edit]
Critical response [edit]
The film received mixed reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gives the movie a score of 48% based on reviews from 104 critics. The site'southward consensus is: "While not the deepest boxing movie out there, Undisputed is successful at hitting its aspiration of being aught more than than a genre motion-picture show."[12]
Hill said he was "very happy about" the film. "I mean no film is across criticism, but I think we've made a very minor movie. Heck, we did it in 39 days, it cost $xx million, which is very cheap for Hollywood standards, and tells a good story. I guess information technology's the literary equivalent of a short story... With all the activeness in it and the tough guy aspects, it's going to appeal mainly to a young male audience. But, besides the nostalgia of the sport might appeal to older males. Based on some of the reviews I've read already, the women don't seem to be enjoying it as much. Just you hope for the best."
The film debuted at number viii at the box part making $4.seven million in its starting time calendar week.[10]
Sequels [edit]
The picture received three straight-to-video sequels. The kickoff was Undisputed 2: Last Homo Continuing, which was released in 2006. A second sequel, Undisputed 3: Redemption, was released in 2010, and follows Undisputed 2 'south Yuri Boyka equally the main graphic symbol. A third sequel, again focusing on the latter character, Boyka: Undisputed, was released in 2017.
References [edit]
- ^ a b Kehr, Dave (23 August 2002). "AT THE MOVIES: A Terrible Beauty". The New York Times. p. E8.
- ^ a b "Undisputed". Box Function Mojo.
- ^ Box role figures for Walter Colina films in France at Box Role Story
- ^ a b c d eastward Lovell, Glenn (26 Aug 2002). "'Undisputed' director Walter Hill all the same is king of the ring". Knight Ridder Tribune News Service. p. 1.
- ^ a b c d due east Portman, Jamie (28 Aug 2002). "Information technology was a battle to get Undisputed...". CanWest News. p. ane.
- ^ a b Dawson, Angela (18 Aug 2002). "AN ACTOR BOXES Backside BARS IN 'UNDISPUTED'". Boston World. p. L.12.
- ^ a b c d e Holmes, Emory (21 Aug 2002). "Cornerman; Emanual Steward, trainer of 29 world champions, prepares Wesley Snipes to fight in 'Undisputed.'". Los Angeles Times. p. F.1.
- ^ a b c d Clint Morris, "Undisputed: Interview with Walter Colina", Webwombat accessed 25 May 2014
- ^ a b c Cling, Ballad (22 Jan 2001). ""Undisputed" to battle with Snipes, Rhames". Las Vegas Review - Journal. p. 5E.
- ^ a b Fuson, Brian (26 August 2002). "'Signs' crops upwards as leader of field". Hollywood Reporter. p. i.
- ^ "SNIPES MAY Endure RESHOOTING PAINS". New York Daily News. 19 Feb 2002. p. 24.
- ^ "Undisputed (2002)". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster.
External links [edit]
- Official website
- Undisputed at IMDb
- Undisputed at AllMovie
- Undisputed at Box Office Mojo
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undisputed_%28film%29