Rating:
Director: Michael Mann
Producers: Paul Ardaji, A. Kitman Ho, James Lassiter, Michael Mann, Jon Peters
Screenwriters: Eric Roth & Michael Mann
Director of Photography: Emmanuel Lubezki
Cast: Will Smith, Jon Voight, Jamie Foxx
| ALI Rating: Director: Michael Mann Producers: Paul Ardaji, A. Kitman Ho, James Lassiter, Michael Mann, Jon Peters Screenwriters: Eric Roth & Michael Mann Director of Photography: Emmanuel Lubezki Cast: Will Smith, Jon Voight, Jamie Foxx |
|
Review by: Ian
Golding
1/16/02
I'm a huge Michael Mann fan. Heat is a wonderful film, one of my favorites. I'm also a huge Muhammad Ali fan. During Apple computer's "Think Different" ad campaign, a friend of mine complained about the one that featured Ali. He said he didn't think Ali fit in with the campaign and that he wasn't all that of an important historical figure. I just about went off on this very good friend of mine. "Are you kidding?! Are you nuts?! It's the only one I agree with! What the hell did Ghandi ever do?"
I figured I couldn't go wrong with this film. Boy, was I wrong.
Ali is beautifully shot, well acted, and terrible. It's a dreadful film that is nothing more than a vanity project for Michael Mann. He's gone to such lengths of extravagance that he casts multiple non-speaking roles with fairly familiar actors. Paul Rodriguez does not say a word in this film as Ferdie Pacheco. Neither does LeVar Burton as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Why cast them? Why spend more money that needed to cast actors who don't look all that much like the real people if they never talk? And on the subject of why, why did Mann choose to fill the first hour with two scenes that cut back and forth between someone singing and a significant event in Ali's life? Why did these sequences need to go on so long? Why did the audience have to sit through a significant sidetrack about Malcolm X's death? We all know the great influence Malcolm had on Ali's life, but to completely stop the film to show it? And why did Mann choose to film X's death almost exactly as Spike Lee shot it less than ten years ago in Malcolm X?
All of these questions lie in a script that, in retrospect, never stood much of a chance. Muhammad Ali's life is so well documented that we've seen most of it before, and what we haven't seen carries the implication that it's not worth seeing. Furthermore, some of the most enduring images of Ali's life seemingly "must" be recreated for the film, and the writers then have to assemble the scenes to fit those moments. It's writing by Gallup poll, and it makes a very disjointed film. We get no feel for the fascinating relationship between Ali and Fraizer, Ali and Cosell, or Ali and his fans. We're left with focusing on the women of Ali's life, none of who are noteworthy. Jada Pinkett-Smith is completely forgettable as his first wife Sonji, a role with only about ten lines. As far as the rest of the cast goes, Jon Voight is compelling as Howard Cosell, but is given very little to work with. Will Smith, for all the hype about dialect coaches and physical training, is a pale imitation of Ali. The words are there, he sounds a lot like Ali, but the power and greatness is missing.
All in all, Ali simply tried to
be too much to too many people. Michael Mann claims to tell us
the story we don't know about Ali's life, but in the end tells
us scant little of note.
Agree? Disagree? Talk about it in the forums.
|
|
|
|
|