Tyson (2008 Cannes Film Festival)

Director James Toback ("Two Girls and a Guy") leverages his twenty-plus year friendship with the former “Baddest Man on the Planet” to capture a warts-and-all documentary confessional from Mike Tyson that feels like the most candid therapy session you’ve ever witnessed. Whatever preconceptions you have about Tyson will be challenged in a modern story of self-destruction and renewal that is as much about one vulnerable man’s desperate need for guidance and security as it is a reflection on American society, the media, and the sport of boxing. “Tyson” is nothing short of magnificent.

Rated R. 90 mins. (A)