Ali
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Movie Reviews of Ali
Movie Review: THE CHAMP IS HERE!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Wil Smith delivered a knockout performance of The Greatest in Michael Mann's production. I had a chance to see this movie again in my collection. Jamie Foxx also did a super job in the movie. Anyone who followed the career of Muhammad Ali won't be disappointed in this movie portrayal!Movie Review: Powerful
Summary: 5 Stars
Will Rocks as Ali! His sass-mouthed remarks on George Foreman and other opponents bring chuckles and wrinkles about my lips. He cracks me up. The show I'd recommend to friends. I admire this tough boxer. I saw some parts. This movie Rocks!!!Movie Review: Dawn's Ali review
Summary: 5 Stars
Movie was good. Will Smith did a pretty good portrayal of Muhammed Ali. However, he didn't walk like Ali. He should have been taught the way Ali walked. But that aside, I still enjoyed the movie. Thank you.Movie Review: Hard to make a great film about a great man.
Summary: 4 Stars
Some films are made great by their by action, others by being a great story, others by the soundtrack or special effects. This movie like a few others was made by one characterization. Will Smith IS Muhammad Ali, primarily because he has worked to make Ali's voice and inflections his own. It is an incredibly convincing performance, and to the reviewer who said that Smith could not capture Ali, I ask whom he would suggest instead? It is hard for me to disagree more with another Amazon[.com] colleague, and I would instead concur with another reviewer who noted this film shows the ability to have a single Oscar-caliber performance in a film which even the biggest fans acknowledge is not likely to be the best film of the year. I guess the real challenge accepted and dealt with admirably by Director Michael Mann comes with making a film about not just someone we all know, but THE most recognized person in the world.. How can this story be told in just two hours? As some of the detractors have made clear, this is a tough task. But Mann did a great job, in my opinion.
Where to start this story; and where to end it? No mention of the young boy's going to learn to box after some neighborhood kids humiliate him by stealing his bicycle. No mention (rather surprisingly) of his Olympic gold medal and the even more significant return to the States where he threw his medal into a river in protest of racial mistreatment. And even once we get that issue resolved, where to end this saga? How about Summer, 1996 in Atlanta, with the Champ holding the Olympic torch (or even better, at a preliminary boxing match in those same Olympics when an incredibly bitter Joe Frazier was, when introduced, met by cheers of "Ali, Ali!"). This is by no means a criticism, because this one incredible life is far too large to capture in one movie.
Those who lament the lack of great boxing misunderstand what the film and Ali were all about. He transcended his sport in a manner that no athlete has in the past fifty years (and perhaps ever). America in the 1960's, racism, and the draft were far larger issues and more formidable competitors for him than Liston, Frazier, Foreman could have been if he had to fight all three one after the other! If all he had done was fight and defeat them, he would have been just one more name in the record books. This leads to my only real substantive lament: While the "Rumble in the Jungle" was a singular and a true epic event, I think the three Frazier bouts were the greatest one-on-one competitions in the history of sport, and were among the defining moments of their respective careers. For this reason, I would have like to have seen more time devoted to that relationship.
Great supporting actors. Before seeing this, I could not imagine Jon Voight as Howard Cosell (just like Will Smith, Voight also made this role his own merely with the use of tonal inflection). Ditto the efforts of Jamie Foxx as Drew Bundini Brown. Mario Van Peebles would have been memorable as Malcolm X, but for the fact that we ALL know that he could never again be portrayed after the efforts of Denzel Washington.
Just like the Man himself, some people liked him, and some people hated him. Not surprisingly, the reviews turned our correspondingly. It is, as noted a better than respectful telling of the life of a great figure in the history of America. For my money it was worthwhile, and I enjoyed it more the second and third time.
Movie Review: Michael Mann's visual poem on the life of the champ
Summary: 4 Stars
The ad campaign for "Ali" focused on Will Smith's Oscar nominated portrayal of Muhammed Ali, but in the end I found this to really be director Michael Mann's film. Like "The Last of the Mohicans," this is also a film where the leading man looks intently while the music surges. Mann has always been enamored of letting music carry a moment (first evidenced by his use of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" for the climatic scene of "Manhunter") and "Ali" is certainly no exception. The film begins with a montage of Cassius Clay out running as part of his training for his first title fight with Sonny Liston mixed with images of formative influences on Clay growing up and Sam Cooke (David Elliott) performing in a Harlem nightclub. Unfortunately, the film never reaches this high initial peak again during the rest of the film.
"Ali" is not a traditional biopic in that those who know little about the champ's life are not going to understand what is going on. The strategy of mouthing off at every opportunity to convince Liston that the young Cassius Clay was psychotic or the "rope a dope" tactic that Ali used to defeat George Foreman (Charles Shufford), are implicit at best. In this regard the film clearly works better with those who know enough of Ali's life to fill in the pieces (the scene where Ali ane Joe Frazier (James Toney) drive around in a car together planning their first fight was one of the film's few revelations for me). Mann creates something of a patterned mosaic, where there are fights, women, and interviews with Howard Cosell (Jon Voight), while Malcolm X (Mario Van Peebles) and Martin Luther King, Jr. are gunned down. What cuts through this is Ali's refusal to be drafted into the Army to go and fight in Vietnam. At the end of the film as Ali trains for the "Rumble in Jungle" his run through the streets of Zaire reprises the opening but the repetition rings hollow.
There are scenes where Smith gets to spout off some of Ali's wonderful rants, but it is clearly established that this is not the "real" Ali. The moments in the film when we think we glimpse the real man are, paradoxically, not those in which he is talking but those in which he is quiet, his eyes taking in the world around him and leaving it to us to figure out what is going on in his mind. If there is any moment in the film where Ali is laid bared it is when he is punishing Ernie Terrell (Alfred Cole) for having called him Clay: Ali refuses to finish his opponent off, hitting Terrell again and again, repeatedly shouting "What's my name?"
I also want to take Mann to task for having reduced the first fight with Frazier to the end of the fight, choosing to omit the shocking image of Ali on the canvas, wearing those shoes with the tassels. Especially since this is a film that takes the time to give the audience a sense in the final fight of how long Ali let Foreman pound on him against the ropes, waiting for the right moment. Fortunately, a lot of the film's faults are covered by Smith's performance, which has been deservedly praised for avoiding the pitfalls of caricature. Ali's legion of fans will enjoy this film more than others, but in the end "Ali" falls short of being as epic as the man himself.