AIN’T NO VIET-KONG EVER CALLED ME NIGGER (Ali (DVD))

Member Name: C_Padd

Product:	Ali (DVD)
Date:	16/07/02 (1370 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good quality, enjoyable and interesting, good fights and good acting

Disadvantages: Not a pure boxing film, or a pure life story. Too long and fails to last in the middle.

I am too young to remember Mohammed Ali in his prime. All I see is a weak and frail man savaged by his illness. However his catchphrases are famous, taunting opposition, changing from his slave name to Nation of Islam and refusing to fight in Vietnam. Apparently he could also box a bit.

Ali does exactly what it says on the tin. It is a biography of one of the greatest sportsmen and characters in sport ever. It follows the real life of Mohammed Ali through a decade from 1964 to 74 and includes all the famous events in his life, bouts with Sonny Liston and George Foreman. What a job it must have been to do make a film about such a person. The film begins with Cassius Clay as the young and big-mouthed challenger who surprisingly beats Sonny Liston to win the heavyweight championship of the world and especially the peoples champion. Vietnam, Malcolm X and losing several years of his career due to Nam before ending with the ‘rumble in the jungle’ beating George Foreman.

The main problem with the story line is each event is just too famous. I know all this and I was not around then and not a particularly large fan of boxing. The film could do very little to surprise me, and could only disappoint when they left things out or did not do them as well. Still the film was well done, all the famous ‘float like a butterfly’, ‘what’s my name’ and so on were well delivered and the film did have a lot of class about it. Ali’s personal life was well done, his four wives and troubled parent relations and friends. It was a good enough film, though with such a big and well known life so much could have gone wrong. It was more of a fact that they managed not to screw it up too badly than did it well.

Will Smith does a surprisingly good role as Ali, though is helped by a great cast around him. He gets in all of Ali’s charisma and wise cracks convincingly and with spirit, without adding any of his own touc
hes of rap or 90s language. He also has obviously been in training for this, bulking up and looking the part for a heavyweight. He has also learned how to box, some realistic scenes though not a pure boxing flick concentration on the moves. Jon Voight plays commentator and sports presenter Howard Cosell, he and Ali enjoy several exchanges comically and also supports him in worse moments. Mario Van Peebles plays Malcolm X who has a big part in the film and Ali’s three wives are also in, Jamie Foxx as his first wife Bundini Brown standing out. The whole lot are really good, there are no weak links and Smith especially excels.

‘Ali’ gets political in places, depicting his friendship with Malcolm X and him changing his name to reject his slave given Cassius Clay to the black Nation of Islam Mohammed Ali. Malcolm X’s assassination is depicted quite brutally. Martin Luther King is also shown and the whole ideas of Nation of Islam coming with Christianity and Judaism are shown to show how much of a part they were of Ali’s life. Ali’s refusal to go and fight in Vietnam comes up with the line for my title and it is a fair reflection of what he believed and the consequences that came about. When he was refused licences no one wanted a part of him, compared to when he was the champ, and especially how he was screwed by his white management team who left him down after he became the highest grossing boxer ever.

This is a long film, running time 150 minutes or two and a half hours. There is more than enough to keep you interested though and boredom is not a problem. The film is rated a 15, the boxing scenes are no worse than any others, some violence out of the ring and actually very little bad language.

At over two and a half hours you may start to lose some interest. The film has a tendency to spend too long going through some bits tediously then jumps through others too fast. It could also suffer like many spec
ialist sports films. People who don’t like the sport don’t understand it and those that love the sport pick it to bits as unrealistic. Ali does not do any of that. It is not setting out to be a pure look at his boxing talents and as a result does not end up as a boxing classic like Raging Bull. This is a more detailed look at the whole of Ali’s life and interesting to watch. The fight scenes are great. It would be a very hard job to do a flawless depiction of Ali, and there are problems. Some parts are missed, especially fights, it loses some of its interest and a bit drawn out.

Overall a good film. It is not a clear boxing film, and perhaps does not get the real emotions that this could have done. It is still very enjoyable and has style. You will probably have to have some sort of interest in boxing or Ali to really enjoy, but it is an interesting film. I was torn between three and four stars, as it is better than average and a good quality but far from perfect.

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