Again, it's an end-of-month archival expansion here at
Shared Darkness, ergo this review of Michael Mann's
Ali, originally published upon its 2001 theatrical release. To wit:
The life story of boxer Muhammad Ali would seem to be a
no-brainer for big screen treatment. After all, it has nearly everything:
defining sports triumphs, personal tragedies, massive political intrigue, even
plenty of women. Yet like both the story of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and
Spike Lee’s curiously stalled Jackie Robinson biopic — two other tales of shaping
influences of middle-century America that happen to be about
African-Americans — the story of Ali languished for many years until an
obsessively detailed white director wielding huge critical clout from his last
film (Michael Mann, from
The Insider) and
a proven black box office star willing to sign on for a lucrative sequel from
the financing studio (Will Smith,
Men in
Black II) pooled their power capital and hammered the project through the
pipeline.
However dubious the circumstance by which the film finally
got made, the result makes it largely worth the wait. Covering the tumultuous
ten year period from 1964 to 1974 during which Ali — then still named Cassius
Clay — won the heavyweight title of the world, converted to Islam, saw his title
stripped for refusing to go to Vietnam and then regained it in the brutal,
famously dubbed “Rumble in the Jungle” match against George Foreman,
Ali is a vigorously, imaginatively
directed biopic, an immersive film experience that bristles with thoughtfulness
and aspires to illuminate not only how the time and conditions of America
shaped this robust public figure, but also how he in turn shaped them.
The force of Muhammad Ali’s personality is such that it
reaches across boundaries of creed and color, age and influence.
The challenge
facing Smith then, by all accounts heretofore an actor of a uniquely
contemporary presence and connection, is monumental. And I admit, going in I wasn’t
sure he could pull it off. But the result is something magical — part Smith,
part Ali, completely engaging. Smith is a bona fide lock for an Oscar
nomination, and deservedly so;
he nails the singsong, preacher-shaped qualities
of Ali’s speech patterns and famously taunting raps, capturing both Ali’s
gregariousness and uncertainty — how he would actually talk trash to make himself believe.
Equally amazing, if not even more so, is Jon Voight (below center) as
Howard Cosell, the sportscaster with which Ali shared a unique rapport.
Voight’s mimicry of Cosell’s famous cadence is pitch perfect, and the
interactions between the two characters include many of the best parts of the
movie.
Working from a story by Gregory Allen Howard and a
screenplay by the writing tandem of Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher
Wilkinson, Mann and his writing partner on
The
Insider, Eric Roth, craft a shooting script that presupposes a good bit of
foreknowledge regarding Ali and those surrounding him.
Particular diligence is
paid to the boxing sequences (shot high and tight, there’s a thump for every
blow, yes, but also a grunt for every lunge and a whistle for every lightning
bolt miss),
but the rest of the film is often rather abstract and free form.
Ali opens under
the pleading, almost mournful strains of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home To Me”
in Miami’s Fifth Street gym, with the then 22-year-old Cassius Clay preparing
to fight Sonny Liston, and the film continues for nearly seven minutes with only
a few sparse lines of dialogue. I defy you to name another mainstream filmmaker
courageous enough to open an $85 million film in this manner.
Yet for all their originality and surface absorption, these
abstractions are sometimes distractions.
Ali
is, after all, about probably the most charismatic figure of the 20th century,
a one-of-a-kind starburst of unyielding determination, unfettered ego and
enormous native ability who was a genuine sports icon
and media superstar before jabbering to the media had become a
means to an end, a way to increase one’s star or even become a celebrity.
Mann’s film gets this, but it also dwells on mood at the expense of structure.
While these digressions are artful, I sometimes yearned for a greater narrative
discipline, a streamlining and focus on what Ali himself thought, felt and
experienced. Certain segues, like from Malcolm X’s assassination directly to
Ali’s rematch with Liston, ring false; Mann’s desire to be as inclusive as
possible in his storytelling and to capture in particular Ali’s indomitable
independence disregards — or at best fails to convey — the ferocious curiosity that
in fact drove much of the decision-making in his personal life, including his
appetite for women (portrayed here by Jada Pinkett Smith, Nona Gaye and
ER’s Michael Michele; Ali’s fourth and
current wife, Lonnie, falls outside the realm of this story).
Still, even more than most films perhaps, these criticisms
are a manner of taste; the acting and filmmaking of
Ali make for an absorbing experience, and
when push comes to shove
I can’t name another filmmaker whose Ali biopic I would rather see over Mann’s,
and certainly not starring an actor other than Smith. The structured
schizophrenia of their collaboration, if occasionally wayward, still bears some
undeniably tremendous fruit.
(Columbia,
PG-13, 157 mins.)
