Ali
"Michael Mann and Will Smith punch their way to the bruised heart of a hero." -Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
Superstar Will Smith (Men In Black) gives the performance of his career as boxing legend Muhammad Ali in an amazing epic drama from Academy Award®-nominated director Michael Mann (Best Director, The Insider, 1999).
Member Reviews
Dramatic - LilyandMick
This movie was such a dramatic with up and down throughout his life. It was great to see all of his life with how he is going through and how they are fighting against all those days. It showed his best personality of all in this movie and great to see in the structured story.A Major Disappointment - revsdd
There are some fine performances in this movie. Will Smith was quite convincing as Muhammad Ali. It must be difficult and intimidating to play a legend who is still alive, but he managed to get both the look and the voice down quite well. Stealing the show, however, was Jon Voight as Howard Cosell. Voight really WAS Cosell in this movie. Everything about him screamed Cosell. Unfortunately, though, I thought the story itself was weak and badly organized. There was no flow to it; no continuity. It was a series of vignettes of Ali's life (Ali fights Liston; Ali converts to Islam; Ali refuses induction; etc., etc.) but without any strong sense of connection between them. The second problem is that this wasn't about Ali's life. The movie starts with Ali winning the title against Sonny Liston in 1964 and ends with him winning the title back against George Foreman in 1974. So it's 10 years of Ali's life, and this lack of historical context bothered me a bit. What were his younger years like? You wouldn't have a clue from watching this movie, for example, that Cassius Clay was a gold medalist from the 1960 Rome Olympics. It was never mentioned. And what of his sadder later years? After winning the title back against Foreman he had a couple of good years and some good fights (notably the rematch with Joe Frazier) but it's not mentioned. And what an interesting study could have been done of a problem many athletes have giving up the limelight. From about 1976 on Ali was fading badly, won some questionable decisions based on his name rather than his performance in the ring, and fought a series of relative unknowns because he knew he couldn't beat the serious contenders (losing to Leon Spinks in 1978 and then winning the title back again in a rematch later that year.) Then, ill fated comeback attempts; the battle with Parkinson's. All left out. That made this movie disappointing. A look at his earlier and later years would have made this much better.I am the the quite goodest - MSEK
The life and career of Muhammad Ali offers phenomenally rich material for movie makers. This could have been an incredible film and it isn’t; it stays on the surface of one chunk of Ali's career and doesn’t compare with, for example, When We Were Kings. Still, Will Smith leads the cast of lookunlikes masterfully, channeling enough of Ali’s boundless charisma and fun to make this well worth watching.
Member Reviews
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Dramatic - LilyandMick
This movie was such a dramatic with up and down throughout his life. It was great to see all of his life with how he is going through and how they are fighting against all those days. It showed his best personality of all in this movie and great to see in ...A Major Disappointment - revsdd
There are some fine performances in this movie. Will Smith was quite convincing as Muhammad Ali. It must be difficult and intimidating to play a legend who is still alive, but he managed to get both the look and the voice down quite well. Stealing the show, ...I am the the quite goodest - MSEK
The life and career of Muhammad Ali offers phenomenally rich material for movie makers. This could have been an incredible film and it isn’t; it stays on the surface of one chunk of Ali's career and doesn’t compare with, for example, When We Were Kings. Still, ...