Will Smith has grown as an actor

Rating: Null/10 (3 February 2002)

The movie focuses on the time between when a young Cassius Clay first wins the Heavyweight Championship of the World from Sonny Liston and when a 32 year old Muhammad Ali regains the Championship from George Foreman at the Rumble in the Jungle. The movie focuses less on Ali in the ring and more on his life outside. You see the multiple marriages, his conversion to Islam, his fractured relationship with Malcolm X, and most importantly his battle with the United States Courts when Ali refused to serve in Viet Nam. Michael Mann directs this in his usual visual intense style. If you have ever seen a production by Mann (Miami Vice, The Last of the Mohicanns, and The Insider to name a small few) you know that he deals with a variety of colors to focus the movie and the scenery tells the story almost as much as the script. The acting is superb by almost everyone involved in the movie but a few people really stand out. Will Smith proves that Robert De Niro is not the only one who will gain weight by packing about 20 to 30 pounds of muscle on his frame and then completely immerses himself in the cadence and style of Ali's speech. Few actors today would seem to have the capability to spout off some of Ali's tirades as Will does. Jamie Foxx does an incredible job as Bundini Brown. His breakdown on drugs and the fight back to sobriety shows that this former In Living Color co-star can handle a great deal more than we originally thought. The surprise of the movie was Jon Voight. People have portrayed Howard Cosell before but Voight actually becomes him. He sounded like Cosell and the make-up job was so detailed that I had to look a couple of times before I was able to actually recognize Voight. The relationship between Ali and Cosell is played up on many levels showing how each actually helped catapult the other into the levels of stardom that they reached. The movie is very, very well done. The script was tight and didn't stray into too many areas that would have dragged the movie down. The direction was on top and the dialogue was rapid fire and concise.