Will Smith earned an Oscar nomination for his performance as Cassius Clay Aka Muhammed Ali. After having watched the lengthy movie, it's easy to see that Will put himself into the role completely. His in ring workouts are authentic enough to be believable. This is even more impressive since each of other Boxing Actors are actually real boxers.
Beyond his athletic performance, the story and writing simply fail to come off as exciting as one would hope. The people's champ struggled through some really interesting and tough life choices. Unfortunately Smith is unable to convey this as the story focuses a little too much on Malcolm X and his involvement with the Nation of Islam. The feature is a bit over two and a half hours which is already not in its favor. I'd love to think that someone one day could make a nearly three hour movie about my life but then again I'm nobody. That makes it even more disappointing that Ali's life wasn't nearly presented as excitingly as it could have been.
The supporting cast in the movie do have their moments. Jamie Foxx gives a humorous take on Ali's friend and sometime assistant, Drew 'Bundini' Brown. There's an interesting sidestory about their relationship which I felt could have been explored further. One of the things I did learn about Ali that I really had underestimated was his friendship with the legendary Howard Cossell. Here too, Jon Voight gives off a stunning portrayal of the sportcasting legend. Their friendship is shown well enough throughout the movie, with each joshing each other in a loving way.
One of the problems with the movie is that its pacing is too slow. Many scenes feature nice music but they are far too drawn out, even sometimes drowning out the sounds that are being spoken by the characters. The music is admittedly enjoyable but it's use harkens a bit too much toward the MTV video side of things. The first 10 minutes of the movie feels more like an extended TRL cut than a proper setting up of the story.
By far Muhammed Ali is one of my personal heroes, and certainly has had a life worthy of telling on the screen. He is human like anyone else so showing his faults, which the movie seemed to dwell on more than anything, is alright. However the relationships he had with women is far less interesting than the relationships he had with his immediate family, especially his father. The movie never shows his childhood, forsaking the reasons behind his move towards the Nation of Islam.
It's not that the movie is so horrible it's not worth watching, but rather it's simply that the movie passes upon golden opportunities so many times leaving the viewer with too much filler. Michael Mann is an excellent director and Will Smith one of my favorite actors. However neither can weave together a match from this viewpoint of Ali's life.
The Disc:
The disappointing box office showing gives us no surprise that the movie comes with little bells and whistles. This is as straight a DVD movie as we have seen. The transfer has rough spots, implying that it was done rushed. With the movie having only opened a mere 5 months ago this does seem to be the case.
Audio forsakes DTS once again and the 5.1 Dolby Digital option offers glaring and popping at points. As mentioned above, several times we had to strain to understand the words spoken as the music overpowered the balance of the separated channels. The sound isn't always bad, however, as during punch sequences you can almost feel the pain.
Columbia may be planning a special disc in the future with more gusto. We haven't heard but this disc is as bare bones as any VHS. I mean animated menus is not really a feature is it? And who would of thought that Mann and Smith wouldn't want an audio commentary track? They did put alot of themselves into this project, which must have been a real killer to them seeing how it performed in December ($58 Million domestically at a budget of $107 Million).
bottom line:
Ali is one of my favorite sports heroes but this vision of his life fails to make me admire him more. Will Smith gave a gutsy performance but the writing and choice of events to focus on in Ali's life are simply a bore. It's hard to root for a champ when the events leading to his winning aren't very climatic.
2.5 out of 5
By - Brian Gray
1/2
