Ali (2001)

"The Greatest" Reduced

Who do I think of when I think of Muhammad Ali? These days I am confronted with the image of a man who has had his vitality and livelihood sadly taken away by Parkinson's disease. He is today a feeble man, barely able to speak, and yet when he stands before a crowd they cheer. They revere him. They remember the man with a passion, and they call him The Greatest. He is dubbed the Greatest boxer and the Greatest athlete of the 20th century. I know little about Ali other than what his reputation provides me. So when I am going to see a movie titled Ali, I hope that it can offer me an insight into what made this sports legend great.

Unfortunately, Ali disappointed me. I found myself watching a choppy movie that seemed pre-occupied with the feel of the decade in which Ali lived during his prime, rather than with the man himself. Images of Ali, when not in the ring or at a press conference, were downright somber. Little was revealed about his boxing technique and why he was able to take down several larger men like Sonny Liston and George Foreman.

Director Michael Mann took this famous figure and made a respectable artistic decision to attempt to humanize him. Thus, the movie is more about his defiance of the Vietnam War draft and his standing up to self-serving religious leaders. I suppose Mann thought that if the audience wanted to know more about his boxing, it could go rent a documentary about Ali. But I didn't want to rent a documentary. I wanted to see a movie about the purported greatest boxer of all time and why he is considered the greatest boxer of all time.

I knew part of Ali's charisma was his fast talk and his wit, and this is portrayed in the movie as his public persona. In private, however, we see a man mostly angry at the many people and organizations around him who try to do him wrong. His heavyweight boxing title is just a status symbol that allows him to dodge the draft with dignity; without it, what would have made him so special? When the movie isn't putting the spotlight on him, it either erratically jumps from one small scene to the next (at one point, the characters went to Africa, then they left, but the point at which they left was unclear and for the longest time I couldn't figure out if they were still in Africa or not) or it rambles on with dragged-out sequences of questionable purpose. The beginning showed so much of Sam Cooke and Malcolm X (Mario Van Peebles) that I thought the movie was about them. It even goes so far as to show Malcolm X getting assassinated; in a movie about Ali, why even film a scene explicitly showing Malcolm X get assassinated?

There are, however, pockets of goodness to be found in Ali, and it starts with Will Smith, the man who plays the man himself. Bless him, he acts heart out. He put on an incredible amount of muscle and mimics the speed in both footwork and mouth that Ali was famous for. It's too bad he put so much effort in to a performance that is ultimately stifled by the script; Smith's Ali is given relatively little to do, and he mostly just reacts to others. Meanwhile, Jon Voight puts in a delightful rendition of Howard Cosell. Mykelti Williamson won me over with his Don King. And Mann's montages set to soulful music are more appreciable on their own than they are within the context of the movie. One sequence features Ali running through the streets of Zaire, with admirers, mostly children, running with him, all to the luscious sounds of African singing. He pauses to stare at children's drawings of him on the walls of houses. It's a powerful moment, as Ali realizes how he is so highly regarded as a hero among these people, but then frustration sets in on us because, once again, the film hasn't told us why he is so highly regarded. He's a boxing champ -- does this mean the children of Zaire would have revered anyone who just happened to be the boxing champ at the time? Of course not, but the movie doesn't tell us why these people considered him special.

The film had a chance to be a joyous celebration of this special athlete, but for much of the running time the atmosphere was funereal. Towards the end, it began to pick up steam and life; the moments in Zaire were the highlights, and the final boxing match, the famous "Rumble in the Jungle," acted as the climax. I watched the fight, as Ali endured round after round of blows from the wrecking ball that was George Foreman (Charles Shufford) in the hopes of just tiring him out. I thought to myself, that's incredible, but what was it that allowed him to be able to withstand that? I didn't find any answers from the movie.

Rating: 5/10

©Jeffrey Chen, Dec. 29, 2001

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