And I so wanted to love it (Ali (DVD))

Member Name: george_lazenby

Product:	Ali (DVD)
Date:	06/03/02 (126 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Superb fight sequences, good use of music, lovely photography

Disadvantages: Big Willy Style

You have a list that starts with 'Manhunter', followed by 'The Last of the Mohicans', 'Heat' and then 'The Insider'. Sooner or later, you make this many films that are this good, you have to fail. Like a prizefighter constantly going back into the ring and getting a knock-out, you know that, in the end, Michael Mann, one of the most consistently interesting and intelligent of American filmmakers, he has to fail.

And so, we come to 'Ali'.

This is a film which could have, and perhaps should have been made by Spike Lee, with perhaps Denzel Washington (who has already played a boxer convincingly in 'The Hurricane'), or perhaps Wesley Snipes, a man with an ego and swagger equal to the man himself. This could have been a politically charged, energetic biopic with the sweep of 'Malcolm X' (himself a player in the Ali story), and the fire of 'Do the Right Thing'. But a man whose approach is as cool, reflective and detailed as Mann's usually is doesn't seem right for a man once known as The Lip. And so it goes.

What's good about 'Ali'? Well, the supporting cast are excellent - there are some superb performances here, from Jamie Foxx as Ali's trainer / sidekick Drew 'Bundini' Brown, from Mario Van Peebles as a troubled and doubtful Malcolm X, from Mykelti Williamson in a superb cariacature of the vile Don King. Indeed, should an Oscar not be awarded to Jon Voight, you know they're rubbish: buried in unbelievably convincing make-up as US TV's answer to Des Lynam, Howard Cosell, he still gives both an astonishingly accurate impersonation and a genuinely humane performance. Indeed there are even moments when Will Smith would have you believe that Ali's Parkinson's disease was gone, and the Greatest was back. But we'll get to him in a minute.

Much of 'Ali' is superbly directed, and all of it is stunning to look at. The ope
ning montage, building up to a fight, (intercutting a Sam Cooke concert, with Ali as a child, training for the fight, and attending one of X's sermons) is one of the most impressive bits of filmmaking and editing I've seen outside a Scorsese movie. The look, the sound, the rhythm, it's all perfect, setting the tone and the themes perfectly.

Moreover, the boxing matches are the best I have ever seen. Full of the mauling, clumsy moves and wrangles that cinematic boxing is nearly always ignorant of, Mann manages to put you in the ring, delivering and taking blows with the fighters.When George Foreman has Ali on the ropes, seemingly cornered and cowed, you feel like you're hemmed in alongside him; each one of the protracted fight sequences is stunning, flawless, completely convincing. When you consider how many great directors have stepped into the ring, how many classics have made about boxing and boxers ('Force of Evil', 'Raging Bull', 'Fat City', 'Rocky', 'The Quiet Man'), Mann's achievement is considerable. It's worth watching for these bits alone.

But - and it's a big but - there are crucial ways in which 'Ali' completely fails to work. For one thing, there are issues about Ali which have to be addressed, which this film ducks entirely. A highly political, hugely charismatic, hugely assertive man in public, Ali has had four wives, is pretty incapable (as Smith admits onscreen) of staying faithful, and crucially, was manipulated to quite an alarming extent by the Nation of Islam. The film depicts all of this, without ever making a judgement about why Muhammad Ali was so strong in public, and so flawed in private. The film even shows him repudiating his mentor Malcolm X (later murdered by the Nation of Islam), only to realise later that Islam leader Elijah Muhammad has exploited him, and then he still deals with them - why was Ali such a chump, you ask, and there is no answ
er.

Worse yet, the film covers a ten year period of Ali's life from the early sixties to his successful attempt to regain the World title from Foreman in Zaire in 1974 - and Smith doesn't look a day older. If you've seen 'When We Were Kings', the documentary about the Foreman / Ali fight which tells you far more than this film does, you'll know that by 1974, Ali looked tired, beleagured, and it was quite credible that some people believed he might die in the ring. Smith looks like a pop star, ready for the big moment. There's no sense of the passage of time, the effect of Ali's experience on his physical and mental being.

And while this might be the director's fault, I think that the blame lies at Smith's door. With the exception of 'Six Degrees of Separation', the only other film for which Smith has received an Oscar nomination and which I'll bet you haven't seen, this is the first film in which Smith has played someone else, as opposed to a polished version of himself. And it utterly fails to work. Most of his wild, OTT routines sound completely synthetic - Smith declaims his lines as if they are heavily rehearsed rather than smart improvisations. He sounds like Ali, he even looks like Ali on occasions, but he comes across as a man doing a Muhammad Ali impression. Meanwhile, in the quiet scenes, robbed of the big lines, Smith has no insight whatever into Ali's weaknesses - he can't communicate what made the man tick because he doesn't seem to understand.

There are all sorts of good things about this film, but ultimately it is unsatisfactory, compromised and robbed of something vital. Smith might well win the Oscar in a week or so, but it will be as a reward for making the movie industry a lot of money, not for the quality of his performance. Muhammad Ali was a massively significant figure, but even a biopic which starred Ali as himself failed to capture the magic, so thi
s one, loaded with pulled punches, doesn't even make it on points.

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