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Director: Michael Mann
Release Date: December 25th, 2001
Rating: R (for some language and brief violence)
See it on Amazon
 I'm not sure if I have enough time to say everything bad that needs to be said about this movie. One would think that a movie called 'Ali' would have been about Ali. At least that's what my naivety led me to believe.
The movie Ali is not about the life of Muhammad Ali the famous boxer; its three hours full of slow motion boxing matches, extremely long, pointless R&B songs, and random events streaming across a poorly defined timeline. The movie could have been about thirty minutes shorter if the pointless songs were cut out.
The movie starts out with Ali (then Cassius Clay) winning his first world championship boxing match. From there we see one quick scene of him as a child on a bus realizing that there is a lot of hate in the world. The rest of the movie is the next fifteen years of Ali's career up until he beats George Forman in Africa to regain his world title.
Dates and changes in time are never clearly defined. The viewer left guessing how much older Ali is every time a scene changes. Understanding the dates of key events in the man's life are impossible from this movie.
We never learn what Ali was like before he was champion, what life was like as a kid or anything of value that is key to shaping a person. We do learn that Ali had three different wives, countless mistresses, wouldn't go to war, and wasn't racist. We also learn that the Nation of Islam is a corrupt organization that killed Malcolm X.
If the viewer knew nothing of Muhammad Ali before seeing this movie, then this movie would be extremely confusing.
The only redeeming qualities
The only aspects of this movie that are worth mentioning are the performances by Will Smith and Jamie Fox. Smith, doing the best he could with a poorly written script, could not have played a better Ali. And Fox, who is mostly known for his goofy, comedy routines, played Drew "Bundini" Brown flawlessly. Both Smith and Fox became their parts.
Other than that, Ali's trash-talking is very entertaining, but that is not reason enough to sit through three hours of nonsense. If you want some trash-talking, watch an episode of WWE wrestling and you'll get the same effect.
Best Picture? What?
In the end, this movie did not explain Ali's life. The title of the film should have been Random Exerts from Fifteen Years of Ali's Life. I'm still trying to figure out how the NAACP gave this movie Best Picture at their Image Awards. If anything, the movie should have been stripped of the award and labeled the disgrace that it is. But I guess that's why I'm not in the NAACP.
Related Links:
Official site
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