-By Ethan Alter

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At first glance, filmmaker James Toback and ex-heavyweight champ Mike Tyson might not seem like obvious candidates to be BFFs. But these two men, who first worked together a decade ago on Toback's 1999 film Black and White, have more in common then you might think. Both love to talk (in fact, one can only imagine what their private conversations must sound like—do they take turns delivering lengthy monologues or just speak over each other the whole time?), both have battled addictions (gambling for Toback, drugs for Tyson), and both are unlikely ladies' men. Both are also, it must be said, raging egomaniacs who will happily spend hours discussing their triumphs and failures, even if all you've asked them is "Do you have the time?"

Tyson previously sang his buddy's praises as a talking head in 2005's The Outsider, Nicholas Jarecki's overly flattering portrait of the writer-director of such curios as Fingers, Harvard Man and When Will I Be Loved. Now, Toback returns the favor by helming Tyson, a 90-minute confessional designed to let the onetime boxing great provide the definitive account of his rags-to-riches story. As the subject of numerous unflattering, unauthorized biographies over the years, it makes sense that Tyson would want to set the historical record straight. And it's undeniably compelling to hear this man—who is best known these days for biting his opponents' ears off in the ring—speak so openly about his troubled childhood, his past mistakes and the fears and self-doubts that he wrestles with every day. Toback compresses his subject's life into a brisk 90 minutes and fleshes out his extensive interviews with Tyson with some gripping archival footage from his fights as well as some rarely seen shots of him in training.

The one thing that Toback doesn't do—and it's the thing that winds up KO'ing his film—is interview anyone who might be able to corroborate or challenge Tyson's version of events. To be fair, Tyson isn't exactly billing itself as an objective documentary. Toback and Tyson (who is also credited as an executive producer) clearly intend for the film to be the cinematic equivalent of one of those unfiltered, tell-all memoirs that retired athletes often write long after their glory days are behind them.

As long as he's discussing his fights or his well-documented relationship with legendary trainer Cus D'Amato, Tyson seems on steady ground. Where both he and the film become unreliable, though, are in the sections that deal with his problematic personal life and history of abusive relationships with women. Not surprisingly, Tyson is reluctant to talk about any of this in detail, particularly his 1992 rape conviction, which sent him to prison for three years. The only statement Tyson offers about the incident is to deny that it ever took place—although he doesn't miss the opportunity to describe his accuser in truly unflattering terms. Another director might have at least tried to make Tyson work harder to defend his sketchy account, but Toback lets his friend off the hook and instead allows the conversation to turn to how hard life was for him in prison.

Thanks to moments like this, Tyson ultimately feels like less of a corrective to some of the more corrosive Iron Mike biographies on the market than a bid to rewrite history in favor of the ex-champ. The truth about the complex, contradictory individual that is Mike Tyson clearly lies somewhere in between these two extremes. That's fertile ground for a documentary filmmaker to explore, but it should done by some someone who doesn't have the subject's number programmed into his cell-phone's speed dial.