Like Ali, Smith warms to his identity as time progresses

Rating: 7/10 (19 December 2001)

Ali is an inconsistently paced movie, but Will Smith does a tremendous job of dramatizing the heyday of the greatest sporting figure (if not cultural figure) of the past 50 years. The movie begins with an interminable montage shuffling between Cassius Clay jogging and an R&B lounge act in a nightclub. Really really long. This is followed by some environment-creating fight hype leading up to Clay-Liston, Ali's first championship bout. The fight takes up at least 10 minutes of screen time. It's a well-done sequence, but a movie about Ali should focus more on his impact outside the ring than his exploits within it. Once the movie learns this, it takes off.
Smith seems to inhabit his character with much more confidence once Clay becomes Ali and begins his dealings with Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam, and the U.S. government in regards to his refusal to accept conscription during Vietnam. Still though, the movie often seems uneven, with certain situations unnecessarily drawn out while other major events in Ali's life (receiving his Muslim name from Elijah Muhammad, the Supreme Court overturning his draft-dodging conviction, etc.) seem to happen in a flash, really happening to Ali rather than done by him. Maybe this is intentional...
Jon Voight is convincing as Howard Cosell. He doesn't really look much like him, but he pulls off Cosell's trademark nasal drone to a T without falling into caricature. And the antagonistic friendship they enjoyed with one another is borne out brilliantly--although at times I wonder if the movie doesn't overstate the actual strength of this relationship. Don King is a "gimme" role for an actor, but Mykelti Williamson does it well, being sufficiently slippery, faux-folksy, and detestable. Smith is excellent in the numerous press-conference scenes, although you get the feeling that he probably just studied tapes of Ali's real-life performances in these situations and aped them verbatim. Even so, they seem fresh and convincing here.
At first, I was disappointed that Mann chose to end this movie with Ali's triumph over Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle. (In real life, Ali went on to lose the belt, regain it, and then lose it again all after this bout.) Today, Muhammad Ali may be popularly associated first and foremost with the health troubles that have plagued him as a result of having (sadly) extended his career into the 1980s. Will Smith absolutely channeled the young/thirty-something Ali--Oscar talk is not unfounded--but I think he would have had trouble maintaining credibility as Muhammad entered his post-fighting years.
Ali the movie ends with Ali the man at the peak of his powers. The scenes leading up to the Zaire fight (which go into further detail on Ali's personal life, and also highlight the dramatic and sinister aspects of staging a sporting event in an African country filled with adoring, hero-starved fans but headed by Mobutu Sese Seko) are way too long, but they're also some of the most moving sports drama you'll find in a movie. You come to realize that an event like this could never have occurred without a galvanizing, universal persona like Ali to precipitate it, which is exactly the point I think Mann hoped to convey about most of the events of this man's historic life.