Very disappointing

Rating: Null/10 (29 July 2002)

This will definitely go down as a missed opportunity. With an excellent performance from Will Smith, an impeccable director and enough time lapsed since the end of Ali's career to be objective, this should have been a great movie.
But it's not. Not that it is without merit. It is extremely well shot and edited and contains the best and most realistic boxing scenes ever (if you doubt this have another look at the over-the-top rubbish in, say, the `Rocky' films). As a film though it really doesn't work.
Part of the problem is `Ali' attempts to address different strands of Ali's life including (obviously) his boxing, his conversion to Islam, the black-rights issue in 60's America and his family life. However it doesn't get into any of these areas effectively and the resultant film seems unstructured and poorly paced. As other people have commented on this site, we never get any feeling for what truly motivated Ali or where he came from and let's not forget, we are talking about the most famous and greatest sportsman of the 20th century.
The film jumps alarmingly through ten years of Ali's life and the entire final fifty minutes or so are dedicated to the `Rumble in the Jungle' . Also long stretches at the beginning primarily feature Malcolm X (although we are never given any true insight into his relationship with Ali). As a result, large amounts of Ali's life and some of his key fights are never covered and after the film I felt I knew about as much about the man as before.
I can't go as far as some people though and say `don't watch this film' as it is still a well made and thoughtful picture and worth seeing for Smith's take on Ali. Sadly, this could have been a great biopic though and isn't. 5/10