Tyson’s is a story made of extremes and Mike tells it in short episodes and without ever falling into the filler
I don’t understand boxing. It’s not that I don’t care, like badminton or sailing. It’s just that I don’t understand it, it’s probably because I have a rather strong spirit of conservation, as my physical education teacher used to tell me, with one of the most refined teasing he has ever heard. But that’s the way it is: the sense of hitting each other until one collapses to the ground is just a stuff far from everything that goes through my head. My business, of course. The premise is to say that despite this aversion, if you are over 30 you cannot fail to have crossed paths with the myth of Mike Tyson, an all-inclusive myth, in which aggression and male-alphism give the best and the worst that a human being can draw from them.
Mike tells precisely this: the complicated relationship of a boy (and then of a man) with violence: the one that surrounds him since he was little and witnesses his mother who clashes with his companions, only to be forced into prostitution when he loses his home and sustenance. All in an area of Brooklyn that is reminiscent of a bombed city, rather than “the greatest city in the world”. Mike experiences violence firsthand: first bullied by his companions because he is a bit chubby and with a wedge, then a petty thief who steals everything from everyone, finally a bully himself, when he discovers that he has become strong.
In all this, boxing plays a fundamental role, which has always been a sort of social safety net capable of channeling aggression that is difficult to control. In one of his thousand prison passes, Tyson begins to fight and never stops. He finds a manager who acts as his father and begins a climb that will take him where we know, while all those he grew up with die around him, making him look straight in the face what his fate could have been.
Mike it could have had a thousand shades, from the most shot drama to the classic coming-of-age story. The merit of this series (from 6 September on Star, within Disney +) is to look for an unexpected cut, managing to combine moments of pure drama (the life of the mother, the deaths of friends in the neighborhood) with passages full of irony, also accompanied by looks into the car by Trevante Rhodes, who plays Tyson effectively. Always remaining on the interpreters, to report a very old and moving Harvey Keitel in the role of Cus D’Amato, Tyson’s first coach.
Another huge advantage is the length of the episodes, always around twenty minutes. A choice that gives a high pace, without the need for fillers. The result is a strong story that turns into a good series, which does not scream a miracle, but fully fulfills its duty. Beyond what you might think of boxing in a broad sense.
Why Watch Mike: For the remarkable pace
Why quit Mike: Because you want tears and blood
