It's a shame Will Smith did so great for such an awful film

Rating: 1/10 (6 January 2002)

My wife and I walked out of this film after the first hour... probably a good thing since we've since heard that the second half is even worse than the first. Let it be known, Will Smith did a great job looking, talking and acting like Ali. However, the film could've been much better made. We went in to see a movie about Muhammed Ali, Cassius Clay, the Black Superman. What we saw for an hour seemed more like a biography of Sam Cooke and Malcolm X with a large emphasis on the Islamic faith. Nothing about Cassius Clay as a child (maybe to explain his reason for wanting to fight and change his name?). Nothing about his being an Olympic gold medalist. We did get to see a bit of training and a fight with Sonny Liston where it seemed there was some funny business (this unfortunately was never explained... it apparently just sort of happened and then faded away). The movie jumped from plot to plot, never really giving us any indication of where it was headed or why we were watching it. Therefore, we stopped. My advice, if you'd like to really learn about The Champ, would be to find a good book about Ali. Maybe someone could recommend one to the makers of this film.