When heavyweight champion George 'Iceman' Chambers lands in prison, the resident gangster arranges a boxing match with the reigning prison champ.
George 'Ice Man' Chambers (Rhames) is a top ranked heavyweight boxer. However Chambers has his world turned upside down when he is accused of rape and sent to prison. Upon his arrival he hears talk about Monroe Hutchen (Snipes) who is the top ranked prison boxing champ 10 years running. Immediately there is bad blood with Chambers not wanting to be second to no one which leads to a lunch room fight between the men. Figuring it will be a good way to make money fellow convict Emmanuel 'Mendy' Ripstein (Peter Falk) sets up a prison boxing match between the two men to decide who is the real UNDISPUTED champ. Michael Rooker plays a guard, Fisher Stevens, John Seda, and Master P co star.
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Drawing on torn-from-the-headlines events and B-movie history, Hill and his co-writer, David Giler, fill out their premise with hardboiled irony and gusto.
With flashbulb editing as cover for the absence of narrative continuity, Undisputed is nearly incoherent, an excuse to get to the closing bout .. by which time it's impossible to care who wins.
Hill looks to be going through the motions, beginning with the pale script.
Walter Hill's prison-boxing flick Undisputed could have been a great B, but it represents a failure of nerve.
A shrewd and splendidly volatile B movie structured around a highly original gambit of suspense.
If Hill isn't quite his generation's Don Siegel (or Robert Aldrich), it's because there's no discernible feeling beneath the chest hair; it's all bluster and cliché.
A forgettable prison boxing movie.
It's dead in the water before the climax.
[A] rock-hard, streamlined 'B' movie.
A solid, efficient B movie that holds the screen masterfully for an all-too-brief 90 minutes.
As with any boxing movie or fight card, the main event doesn't come until the very end, and like too many pay-per-view packages the undercard is underwhelming.
We have no idea where these characters have been, so we don't care where they're going.