Rating- * * (2/5)
In a Christmas season with many highly anticipated releases, this long-awaited biopic of one of the most beloved icons of our time was surprisingly under-hyped by the studio execs. There were no cast members running the talk show circuit the week before release; no fast food promotional tie-ins; and not a lot of the traditional buzz circulating around the release day. Still, I and many others assumed great things to come from Ali. The story follows the life of Cassius Clay during the most critical decade of his life. It follows his many loves, his affiliation with Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, his winning of the Heavyweight Championship and subsequent loss of it after refusing to be drafted, and his final quest to regain it from George Foreman (yes, the grill guy) in the historic Rumble in the Jungle. Even after sitting through the first two hours of the film, I still had hope that it could turn into an Oscar-worthy tribute to the Greatest of All Time. To my dismay, it did not. By all accounts, this movie should have had everything going for it. Academy Award-winning director Michael Mann (The Insider) is known for his gritty realism, which would convert well into a movie with a lot of boxing in it. Will Smith, known for his witty, off-the-cuff humor similar to Ali’s, is cast in the title role. The supporting cast includes such heavyweights as Jada Pinkett-Smith, Mario Van Peebles, Jamie Foxx, and John Voight, who does a marvelous turn as the great Howard Coselle. I will say that all the acting is first rate in Ali. The dialogue seems very genuine and unscripted, and the likeness of the actors to their real-life counterparts is uncanny. The photography is great too; Mann uses filters and handheld cameras whenever possible to convey a gritty tone similar to Mann’s previous work on The Insider. The problem seems to have come in the post-production phase of the film. Several scenes that I felt were very important seemed to get cut short, while scenes with seemingly no relevance seemed to stretch on forever. One example is a sequence in which Ali is running through the streets of an African town while training for the Rumble in the Jungle. The sequence reveals nothing of Ali’s character and little of the story except that the people of Africa seemed to like Ali a lot. However, this scene of Ali running in slow motion through a crowded street lasts for nearly 10 minutes. Other scenes, like several between Ali and Coselle, were cut off just as you begin to enjoy them. The material for a good film is there in Ali, but it is so clouded with unnecessary sequences that it’s almost not worth sitting through. Will Smith’s possibly Oscar-worthy performance is lost in an editing room nightmare; an unfortunate, but very typical Hollywood move. Smith received a well-deserved Oscar nod for Best Actor and Voight received one for Best Supporting Actor but the rest of the film, and deservedly so, received no Oscar recognition. If you’re an Ali fan, a Will Smith fan, or a Howard Coselle fan, this movie might be worth seeing, but otherwise don’t waste your time.