Undisputed (2002) on Netflix
Heavyweight champion George 'Iceman' Chambers is convicted of rape and sent to Sweetwater prison. Monroe Hutchen has never lost a fight there. An inmate mob boss proposes a match.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.1/1036,038 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes48%
Trailer
Plot summary
George 'Iceman' Chambers holds the heavyweight championship and is convicted of rape. He is sentenced to six to eight years at Sweetwater, a new high-security prison in the Mojave desert, where he does not know the customs or the hierarchy of the inmates. Boxing matches between prisoners are held at Sweetwater, and a betting syndicate makes money from them. Monroe Hutchen, serving life without parole, is the most popular fighter and has never lost. Mendy Ripstein, an incarcerated mob boss and a lifelong boxing fan, proposes a match between the two men.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Undisputed (2002)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Walter Hill and David Giler's script grew out of a lunchtime conversation about Mike Tyson, then serving a prison sentence for rape, and the observation that no studio had made a film about a heavyweight champion going to prison.
- There were press reports that Miramax head Harvey Weinstein wanted extra scenes reshot to make Wesley Snipes's boxer more sympathetic, and that Snipes refused to do them.
- For the final fight Wesley Snipes weighed only 178 pounds against Ving Rhames's 220, so fight choreographer Cole McKay had Snipes fight upright while Rhames hunched forward in a crouch to mask the disparity.
- Financing the film with two black stars was a battle; co-writer David Giler said there was pressure to make one of the characters white, which they rejected, noting no white fighter of merit since Rocky Marciano.
- The film was to be shot in a closed-down prison in Jean, Nevada, but the Nevada Film Office's production manager said it lacked the right look, so it was shot instead in an unopened wing of High Desert State Prison in Indian Springs.
- Ving Rhames came to the film in peak physical condition, having spent two years preparing for Night Train, a film about Sonny Liston that was ultimately never made.
