Good but not great

Rating: 6/10 (3 March 2002)

This movie has been hyped up a fair bit pre-release and while I generally dismiss that, this one had me going to the cinema with fairly high expectations. It didn't really live up to that in the end. Nothing in the movie really grabbed me and the whole thing felt a bit like a tele movie to me. There were a number of problems with it, biggest of all was Will Smith as the lead. That's not saying he can't act, he was great in "Six degrees of separation" but the problem was that he's too well known. He had the mannerism and talk of Ali well down but throughout the movie I never had the impression that I was watching Muhammed Ali, it always felt like Will Smith playing Ali. A lesser known actor would have been a wiser choice, even if that would have meant a much smaller box office return. He did bulk up for the role quite a bit but it still didn't look heavy weight size. This is especially telling at the weigh-in for the Ali-Frazier fight at the start. Frazier looks absolutely huge compared to Ali but only weighs in at 8 pounds more. Another problem were the actual fights. Much of the movie had been filmed with handheld cameras to give it a bit of a documentary feel which succeeds reasonably well. But that all gets destroyed when, during the fights, music and slow motion is used to highlight various telling moments or the approaching end of the fight. That, combined with knowing beforehand who was going to win really took the excitement out of it for me.
Finally another problem I had with the movie, and I suspect that a lot of people outside the US or under the age of 40 will have the same problem, was that a lot of details about Ali's life are assumed to be public knowledge in the movie. I found the way it skipped over what seemed to be vital information rather confusing.
Michael Mann is generally overrated as a director. Although Ali is in style quite different to his previous movies that looked to be stuck in the 80's. Good to see Ali honoured for his social stance as well. Though I couldn't help thinking that if Will Smith today, for example, refused to be drafted to bomb Afghanis he'd be just as hated as Ali was then.
6/10