Muddled

Rating: 4/10 (14 January 2002)

Pic follows Muhammed Ali from 1964 to 1974 chronicling his winning the heavyweight championship, losing it and winning it again. This could have been good, but it fails in so many ways.
For starters, Will Smith is totally miscast as Ali--Ali was handsome, full of life and charismatic--Smith is none of those things. When he shouts out Ali's rhymes he comes off like a loudmouth jerk--he totally lacks Ali's sing-song voice and great personality. His face is always blank all during the film--even the fight scenes! No depth of character comes through. Also (although I realize this is a matter of opinion) Smith is ugly--Ali wasn't. All in all he's not a good enough dramatic actor to carry the film.
The script is lousy--very scattershot. It jumps all over the place and characters appear and disappear at a disturbing rate. For instance...Ali meets his second wife at a religious meeting. They just hold hands. The very next scene they're married, have a house AND a baby girl!
Michael Mann's direction doesn't help. It's constantly in closeups of the character's faces. This makes sense during the boxing scenes...you're right in there in the ring. But when it's constant it gets very annoying...especially at 160 minutes.
And the film is way too long. Two hours and forty minutes is overdoing it.
The only good thing about this is all the actors (except for Smith) are great in their roles--especially Jon Voight doing a dead on impersonation of Howard Cosell. And the fight scenes are good.
But this isn't worth seeing. If you want a good boxing movie rent "Raging Bull" or even "Rocky".