A Narrow Win on Points Rather than a Knockout

Rating: 6/10 (5 October 2005)

Although biopics are obviously based on fact, they often have a similar structure to cinematic works of fiction. This is because the makers of such films generally start with a fixed view their of subject and select episodes from his or her life in order to build them into a coherent narrative which will illustrate their particular viewpoint. Thus Ron Howard's "A Beautiful Mind" is constructed as the story of how a brilliant man overcame adversity (in this case a crippling mental illness) and the Stephen Fry "Wilde" is presented as a classic Aristotelian tragedy of a great man brought down by a flaw in his character.
"Ali", like those two films, is deliberately constructed to fit an established narrative pattern, the rise, fall and rise again of a champion. It starts with Muhammad Ali's fight against Sonny Liston in 1964, at a time when he was still known as Cassius Clay, which first brought him the world heavyweight title, and ends with the famous "Rumble in the Jungle" in Kinshasa in 1974 in which Ali reclaimed the title from George Foreman. In between it details his reign as heavyweight champion, his conversion to Islam, his involvement in the civil rights movement, his opposition to the Vietnam War, which led to his being stripped of the title when he refused to be drafted into the US Army, and his unsuccessful attempt to regain the title from Joe Frazier.
During his career, particularly during its first half in the sixties, Ali was a highly controversial character, arousing admiration and dislike in roughly equal proportions. He was admired for his victories in the boxing ring and the stylish way in which he achieved them, relying on skill and tactics rather than on brute power, unlike some of his opponents. He was also admired for the moral courage he showed in his opposition to racism and to American involvement in Vietnam. He was, however, also disliked, and not merely by racists or by those who opposed his political views. Ali's playboy lifestyle sat uncomfortably with his declared religious views, and his constant boasting about his prowess and his taunting and belittling of his opponents struck many as arrogant and unsportsmanlike, even as a deliberate psychological ploy to try and unsettle them. Despite Ali's support of the civil rights cause, many of his most venomous outbursts were aimed not at the white establishment but at his mainly black opponents. It was notable that many of those whom he derided as "ugly", such as Liston, Frazier and Foreman, had darker skins than he himself did. He possibly aroused public interest in boxing more than any other champion, but for all those who eagerly watched his fights to witness his boxing skills, there were also those who watched in the hope (generally disappointed) of seeing a braggart humbled.
Although the film does show some of Ali's rants at the expense of Liston and Foreman, presenting them as a bit of harmless fun, it is too much of a hagiography to explore the contradictions in his character in any depth. The film is, in fact, in many ways unsatisfactory, although none of this is the fault of its star, Will Smith, who does a very good impersonation of Ali, making you believe that you are watching the man himself. (There is another good performance from Jon Voight as the commentator Howard Cosell). The film is too long and, paradoxically, at the same time incomplete. We get nearly three hours concentrating on the decade 1964-74. I think that the film-makers were right to end the film with Ali's victory over Foreman- details of his second reign as world champion in the late seventies and of his post-retirement decline into ill-health would have added little to the story that they wanted to tell- but it was a mistake to omit details of his early life before 1964. Growing up in the American South in the forties and fifties, the young Cassius Clay must have experienced prejudice and discrimination on a daily basis. We learn a lot about Ali's anger at the system and about his involvement in the civil rights struggle, but we do not see what gave rise to that anger or what made that struggle necessary in the first place. The boxing scenes are fairly realistic, although they lack the raw power that Martin Scorsese was able to bring out in another boxing biopic, "Raging Bull", an altogether better film.
Despite this, I found the film watchable; for all his flaws, Ali was a fascinating personality, and it would have been difficult to make a really bad film about him. This one was enjoyable and informative, but could have been better. A narrow win on points rather than a knockout. 6/10