Excellent film! But a tad too much Hero Worship

Rating: 8/10 (17 May 2002)

Let us chalk another one up for Michael Mann! His direction - combining a stunning visual style and pace - deserves high praise. Normally I am not one to sit still looking at fight scenes for too long, but the clever use of Ali's inner dialogs during the fight kept me interested. Also, as usual for Mann's films: I love the sound/music mix. Remember the sound track for `Manhunter' and `The Insider'? This is just as good if not better.
Will Smith's and Jon Voight's performances (and the whole cast for that matter) were so shockingly good that one almost forgot that one was looking at actors on a screen. For a moment I thought I was watching `When we Were Kings' instead of `Ali'! I knew ever since "Runaway Train" that Jon Voight was a major talent but Will Smith! Amazing. Amazing. I look forward to Will's next challenging script.
I do believe that if `Ali' has a fault it is that the script was unbalanced: too far into the hero worship category if the film is trying to be an accurate biography. Ali is/was/always will be a great man, but he isn't quite the sainted figure that the script makes him out to be. I felt that Ali's treatment of Joe Frazier prior to the 1971 bout - painting him out to be a "Tom" and pro-establishment - was self serving and unfair, especially since it was Frazier that gave Ali the chance to regain the title when he didn't have to. This wasn't really touched on in the script and I think it would have been to the films' advantage to show Ali's faults as well as his considerable strengths. Still, Ali has unwavering devotion to his faith, loyalty to his friends, willingness to stand up to the moral outrage of the draft during Vietnam... Come to think of it, compared to our leaders today, Ali maybe does deserve some hero worship after all.