Light punching bio-pic with a struggling lead

Rating: 6/10 (22 July 2003)

The life of Mohammed Ali has been told so many times that only the story of Jesus and the Beatles have been told more. Despite this, the workman like TV director Michael Mannn thinks we should have another jog through it with Will Smith playing the world class boxer and braggart.
The problem isn't that Smith doesn't look like Ali, he does a bit, only he looks more like a middleweight than a heavy: and besides, he is clearly far too old to be the young Ali (or should I say Clay?) - but I may be getting picky. In truth nobody could play the role and be believable, Ali was too unique.
Journalists tend to make excuses for Ali the man because he made their jobs easy, but the problem is that Ali - the man not the myth - wasn't really any angel. His search for religion doesn't bare scrutiny because he never allowed anything to interfere with his life of doing anything he wanted anytime he felt like it. He wanted to enjoy the protection and wealth of his country, but didn't want to join the army - even though he was hardly going to be put on the front line.
(Many countries have conscription and although Vietnam was raging what is there is praise about his behaviour? Instead of being in a barracks he was in hotel rooms with room service and floozies. Political or religious stand my foot - he knew the army would be a world where someone told him what to do and that has never been Ali.)
Apologist always says that his public persona was a sham, but his mouth was ranker than the average sewer not caring much whether what came out of it was accurate or not. His pillory of Joe Frazier (who he never really overcame despite having three fights with him) was nothing more than racism. No white person could have got away with calling a black man a "gorilla." Even his charity could be put down to stupidity, most of the people that got his money could have gone out to do jobs other than bag carrying or towel straightening.
Mann has got in to the grove of new film making by pretending to be a documentary. The wobbly camera making the thing "more real." It also allows for angles to hide the stars unconvincing frame. Strangely Smith doesn't know what to do with the private man, other than to look a bit shame faced when confronted by his lack of faithfulness or plain stupidity. The world has never been able to differentiate between people that talk a lot and people that talk a lot of sense. Not to say Ali couldn't, occasionally, be funny or insightful.
A lot of this movie doesn't gel, it wants to play Ali as the underdog, but he was not the under dog, but the champion. Even when he wasn't he was paid like he was. He wasn't cheated (unlike so many), he was well paid thanks to a ring of good people. For the record most of them were white; but that doesn't fit the story or the film.
We learn nothing about Ali from this film and for long stretches we are barely entertained. We have seen the real fights and know the outcome, drama without suspense cannot be real drama. Many American heroes (Brando, Elvis and Lucas, for example) get fat, lazy and lose the plot; but this film at least knows that it is best to quit before this happens. If only the real Ali had...