Plays too much like a documentary and not a film

Rating: 5/10 (22 August 2005)

"Ali" was one of those hugely-hyped films that just kind of fizzled out once it had been released. So much was built up around its release: Will Smith and all his training he endured to take on the role of Muhammad Ali, director Michael Mann's struggle to get the film made, and of course the very idea of a film bio being made of boxing's most famous legend.
The first disappointment is Smith. I like him and think he's a good actor, but he's out of his league here. For starters, he doesn't look like Ali. He has some of the movements and physical expressions down pat, but he doesn't talk like him, look like him, or have the same presence as him.
The second disappointment is writer-director Michael Mann. Here's a guy with a great career of films (from "Manhunter" to "Heat") who writes a lazy script and abandons his usual directorial style for a standard TV-drama biopic narrative. It's a huge disappointment.
The rest of the cast are all pretty good - Jamie Foxx, Will's wife Jada-Pinkett, Jon Voight and Mario Van Peebles as Malcolm X all acceptable in their roles (although something tells me the inclusion of Jada-Pinkett was unnecessary and just a way of Will getting his wife into the movie) - but overall the film's hugest blunder is its choice of narrative, which feels too much like any daytime drama bio-pic and less like a movie.
There's no connection, no feelings, no excitement - resulting in one of the most disappointing films in recent memory.