Grade: D+

Verdict: Untenable.

Details: Starring Wesley Snipes, Ving Rhames and Peter Falk. Directed by Walter Hill. Rated R for language and violence. One hour, 30 minutes.

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Review: Walter Hill has made a great boxing movie. It came out in 1975, and it was called "Hard Times."

Unfortunately, Hill's current boxing movie, "Undisputed," is not great. It's not even very good.

This is especially disappointing given that it stars two well-liked and well-respected actors, Wesley Snipes and Ving Rhames.

Snipes plays Monroe Hutchen, the champ of the prison boxing circuit. He's incarcerated in maximum-security Sweetwater Prison, which also holds Mendy Ripstein (Peter Falk), an aging but still powerful mobster with a passion for pugilism — not the Vegas-style zillion-dollar Event Matches that dominate the sport today, but for boxing itself, in its pure form, as practiced by Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey and Sugar Ray Robinson.

Rhames plays George "Iceman" Chambers, the outside world's undisputed heavyweight champ, who's been sent to Sweetwater on a rape charge. (Any resemblance to Mike Tyson is purely on purpose.) Chambers isn't interested in fighting some talented amateur, but Ripstein prods him into it by sending a series of inmates who taunt him like an angry bull. Chambers gets mad, Hutchen stays cool and the match is set up. With 15 minutes left in the film, they box.

And that's pretty much all there is to "Undisputed." No history. No character development. No nothing.

Hill used to be one of the most iconoclastic and talented filmmakers in the business, with movies ranging from the gang classic "The Warriors," to the cult westerns "The Long Riders" and "Wild Bill," to the enjoyable megahit "48HRS." He's gained a reputation for defining a kind of rock-hard Americanism. A longtime fan of boxing, Hill lets Falk's character express his outrage and disappointment with how boxing has turned into a soulless big-money media frenzy. The director has something on his mind, and, after a string of flops, "Undisputed" should've been his comeback picture.

But something went wrong. The first clue is that the movie has sat on the shelf for at least a year. (Production wrapped in March 2001.) Plus, it's weird that Snipes, who's top-billed and produced the movie, is hardly in it. He shows off his stuff — and his stuff (from abs to calves) is definitely worth showing — but he's rarely onscreen. His character, who is mostly defined by his recessive, zen-master attitude, spends much of the movie in solitary confinement, building a pagoda out of matchsticks.

At least Rhames gives us someone to watch. He, too, is in great shape and blusters with the egomaniacal authority of someone who's been surrounded by sycophants too long.

But the movie is all buildup to a final bout that doesn't last very long (thankfully). "Undisputed" is poorly balanced, as well — too slow for a younger crowd, too shallow for an older one. As DJ Ryan Cameron of Hot 107.9 said as we walked out of the press screening together, "Where's the rest of it?"

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution