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"There's only one champ in here!"

Undisputed plays like a well-oiled machine, luddite with plot, heavy with style, as straightforward and confrontational as its dueling main characters. Its only goal is to rip through these events as quickly and compellingly as possible; to that end, it strips its story down to the bare essentials, taking pains not to litter it with anything that doesn't directly affect its course or outcome. Some have insisted on drawing parallels to the saga of Mike Tyson; others have conjectured that at its core are the eternal alpha-male issues of masculinity and territoriality. Both theories probably have more than a kernel of truth, but the movie isn't about Mike Tyson, or about masculinity. It isn't "about" anything. It's a simple tale, well told.

The Mike Tyson comparisons are well-supported, as the movie concerns the heavyweight champion of the world sent to serve an eight-year prison sentence after being convicted of rape, an act he vehemently denies. He is George "Iceman" Chambers (Ving Rhames), big, bad, violent, arrogant and temperamental, demanding respect and distance at his new home, the Sweetwater Maximum Security Prison in California. Sweetwater, as it happens, has its own heavyweight champ, undefeated in 10 years of intense inter-prison bouts: Monroe Hutchen (Wesley Snipes), sentenced to life without parole for the murder of a past lover's new boyfriend.

Sweetwater also houses Mendy Ripstein (Peter Falk), a legendary mobster and a boxing connoisseur who uses his influence to arrange a fight between Hutchen and the Iceman, to take place under his own special rules. Ripstein wants to take advantage of the enormous Vegas odds against Hutchen, and if the underdog wins, he gets a cut of the loot. No matter the outcome, Chambers gets to go free on "special circumstances" if he fights. But really, he's fighting to prove once and for all that he's the best.

The movie was directed by Walter Hill, the filmmaker who had to yank his name off his last project (Supernova) after it careened out of his control. Here, he lets loose, forsaking all self-control in favor of insanely rapid editing, frequent flashbacks, screen titles, shifts to black-and-white and fades to what seems like black and white at the same time (you have to see it). There are nice subtler touches as well, including two sublimely creepy shots in which both protagonist briefly break the fourth wall and give the camera a menacing stare.

Hill's twisty, complex visual filmmaking is a perfect contrast to the story, which takes no detours and pulls no punches. All of the cards are on the table from the very beginning: we know that the movie is building to the big climactic fight, and we can pretty well guess the identity of the winner. The movie is concerned with nothing except getting from point A to point B. There are no plot twists, discoveries or revelations along the way. None of the characters undergo any transformations or learn any lessons. There is nothing for us to learn either: not about honor among crooks, or the purity of boxing, or the love that goes into the battle, or any of the millions of obligatory messages one would expect a movie like this to deliver.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate films with ambition. Undisputed doesn't have any in the conventional sense, but on reflection, there is something grandiosely daring about making a movie with no fringe elements. When Hill dispensed with the formalities of the genre, he by default overcame the temptation to make a run-of-the-mill crowd-pleaser, and the movie retains its sardonic, no-frills mean streak to the bitter (?) end.

The fight itself, surprisingly, takes place with no music on the soundtrack and with Hill's otherwise-prevalent pyrotechnics toned down. It's a fitting end to a movie that dares to be a straight line from start to finish.