Surfing movie

Rating: 7/10 (28 December 2001)

Watching 'Ali' was like surfing -- several long waits of nothing happening interrupted by a few incredible rushes.
Mann got many things right: the tone, the balance of a complicated life, and great work from the actors. But there are many frustrating slow scenes. I looked at my watch twice in the first half-hour of the movie, and twice during the ten-minute sequence of Ali running in Kishasha, which was a self-indulgent piece of under-edited crud. "Look, everybody, it's REALLY Africa!"
We aren't allowed to detect the drama of this moment, we're going to have every single emotion forced through Will Smith's face and body language. Too much. Exploring character does not mean devoting several hundred frames of film to a tight focus on the protagonist's tortured features. In Ali's case, much of that attempt to show him thinking could have been skipped.
There were several much better scenes demonstrating character -- the byplay with Cosell, a fascination with termites on TV while Malcolm X has come to tell him something important, or walking away, momentarily silencing his motor mouth in bitter anger at someone else's lack of confidence.
Other pacing oddities riddle the movie. We get to see every single bullet coming straight at Malcolm X's POV, but we're at a medium distance when Ali publicly voices his political concerns about the Vietnam war, wrapped up in one 20-second news conference. This is the emotional center of the film, and all of a sudden we're ten rows back?
Timing issues aside, Will Smith finally fulfills the dramatic promise he made years ago in "Six Degrees of Separation," living into a complex character who is both charismatic and human. I haven't seen all the competing performances this year, but his could easily be in the top five. Great job on sustaining the soft Kentucky cadence. Most of the supporting performances are excellent as well.
But for a character study (with good places to hit fast-forward), you could wait for the rental. There are not enough visuals in here to make you rush to the big screen. A couple of the lighting choices are overdone (wow...everyone's BLUE!). I thought the boxing sequences were effective; Mann puts you right in the middle of the action without the cheat of too much slo-mo. But they would be nothing unusual for people who already watch a lot of boxing, and for people who don't like or watch boxing, it will be just as painful as you always thought.
Final hint: if you're taking anyone with you under 40, sit together ahead of time for half an hour and review the history highlights of Ali's life. Without that, you might not keep up with the story at all...my 14-year-old nephew couldn't even figure out who had won the Ali-Frazier fight!