He just wasn't that interesting a guy

Rating: 6/10 (25 December 2001)

In another stroke of good luck this past week, I was on my way to a movie that I didn't really want to see when I got handed a pass to a sneak preview for a movie I was looking forward to -- Michael Mann's Ali, starring Will Smith.
It is clear that Smith worked hard for this role -- he trained for six months to become a boxer, not just to look like one. He has the trademark Ali mannerisms, often times sounding just like him, and occasionally even looking like him. It's too bad that it turns out Ali just wasn't that interesting a guy. The performance itself was impressive, but the overall experience really wasn't that good.
I usually enjoy Mann's directing style, I like the slow-paced detailed storytelling he did in The Insider, but it just didn't work in Ali. In three hours, I felt like I really didn't know much more about the man than I did going in, and that's not a whole lot of information. Either Mann didn't manage to delve inside Ali's "head" or there just wasn't that much to say about his motivations.
They seem to gloss over some of the most defining moments of Ali's life, like his involvement with Malcolm X, but then spend torturous amounts of time delving into the most insignificant events that really don't lend you any insight. I really wanted to like this movie, I remember growing up watching Ali on TV, and vaguely remember the controversy around him, I hoped Mann would really blow the cover off the stories and myths, but this time around, he fails to land the knockout punch.