In this modern portrait of testosterone codes and machismo posturing, director Walter Hill chisels out a Western of sorts. The lawless frontier is a maximum-security prison; the gunfighters are pugilists, one being the undefeated correctional-system champ (Wesley Snipes) and the other boxing’s undisputed heavyweight king (Ving Rhames), who, à la Mike Tyson, drops in on a six-to-eight for rape.

Rhames gets the juicier of the two roles: his Sonny Liston/George Forman persona dominates the screen as his fists silence the ruling factions of punks, skinheads, and gangsters. Snipes’s silent warrior, on the other hand, spends a majority of the time brooding in the shadows. He’s a man vacant of fire and emotion until he steps into the ring; Rhames’s overconfidence is a put-off too. So when the big fight finally does go down (in a Thunderdome contraption), there’s no draw to it. Hill, who made a great fight film in the ’70s called Hard Times (he also did 48 HRS. and The Warriors), seems content to hang on the fight and nothing but the fight. The result is so one-sided that he has to trump the punchless drama with pulsating music and in-your-face jump cuts. Peter Falk lands a semi-comedic hand to the fantasy as an old-school mobster who is determined to see the brawl go off regardless of the price. (96 minutes)