A Subtle Downhill Slide

Rating: 6/10 (29 December 2001)

For those who don't know boxing history, there are spoilers in this review.
We open in an R & B club, and Sam Cooke is taking the stage and sings a medley of his best songs. As we see the crowd in thrall to him, we cut back and forth, from one of the most electrifying men on stage to the most electrifying man ever to step into the ring, Muhammed Ali. We see him train, and watch Sonny Liston dominate an opponent in the ring. We watch the twinkle in Ali's (Will Smith's) eyes as he finds his destiny.
This is the best part of Michael Mann's new biopic, simply named "Ali." D.P. Emmanuel Lubezki's beautiful transitions from film to digital video, and Mann's direction of actors Smith, Jamie Foxx, Mario Van Peebles, and Ron Silver in muted camera filters and silence, provide a beautiful contrast to the fire of Cooke's music. (One might sense that Mann is trying to imitate Scorsese, but is that really all that bad?)
And from there, almost invisibly, it starts to go wrong. For the first two hours of Mann's 157 minute opus, there is no wrong step taken. Ali is shown as a contemplative and confused man who runs for comfort in all the wrong places; in adultery and a horde of yes-men who vanish without a trace when his license is revoked and rematerialize magically when he gets it back again. Will Smith is fantastic both in trash-talk mode and in his brooding silences. Some will say that Ali was not as stoic as Smith and Mann make him out to be, but you get no complaints of historical inaccuracies from me. I pity the fool who tries to get his history from motion pictures.
Almost everything is covered. His conversion to Islam, his refusal to cooperate in the draft, the subsequent suspension of his license, his first fight with Joe Frazier, his relationship with Howard Cosell, and "The Rumble In The Jungle." It's that last one that gave me problems. Imagine if you will, a long pane of glass going along a conveyor belt. This pane is without blemish or smudge until the very edge of the pane is smashed by a hammer. Not only does this ruin the edge, but makes cracks all the way through.
The fight at the very end against George Foreman in Zaire, is the typical sports movie ending, where Smith takes a boat-load of punishment and then comes back to knock out his opponent. This will inspire some people to clap in the theater, but that is a shallow response. In the previous two hours of the film, we see Muhammed Ali as a flawed man trying to figure things out. It was a sensitive and convincing portrait, but shouldn't that render a boxing victory meaningless? They went from a potentially great film to the next "Rocky" sequel.
Michael Mann is a great director, whose "Heat" has a place right beside "The Godfather" in the pantheon of great crime films. And his work on "The Insider" not only should have made more money, but was cheated out of a few Oscars. There must have been Columbia executives breathing down his neck for a more upbeat ending, because you get the sense that Mann should have known better. At least with all the money this movie will make, he can start work on his next masterpiece.
**1/2 out of 4