Ali film review

certificate_15

ALI

The makers of Ali appear to have watched the brilliant 1997 Oscar-winning documentary When We Were Kings and said to each other 'Now, there's a story we can do something with'. Five writers later, with arguably the biggest star in the world on board in the lead role under the guidance of a director who can do no wrong (Michael Mann), those involved must be thinking about their Oscar acceptance speeches already. Unfortunately they should put off ordering tuxedos and limousines for March, because Ali is undoubtedly one of the most disappointing big-budget films (claims of up to $100m have been made), with a serious topic, to have appeared in some time. It's a sluggish, punch-drunk effort which teaches us precisely nothing about the great sportsman. It cries out to be heralded as an epic, but is so over-indulgent with a self-conscious and under-par central performance that it is little more than two and a half hours of celluloid tedium

Ask even the most uninterested of sports fans to name any fact about Muhammed Ali and they will probably be able to name one of the following events: he first claimed the World Title despite being a huge underdog against Sonny Liston in 1964; he changed his name from Cassius Clay and associated with Malcolm X; he dodged the draft to go to Vietnam and he had his most memorable fight against George Foreman in Zaire in 1973. Oh, and there were a couple of marriages along the way. Most of all ask anyone, sports fan or not, what Ali was like and they will find it hard not to do an impression of the man: there is little doubt that he was the greatest.

The makers of this film assume that we know none of this. They have constructed an undramatic biopic centred aroud these four events and offer little or no insight into the whys or wherefores. We never really get under the skin of the central character as the director strangely chooses to shoot everything in a faux-documentary dramatic style. Sure, the boxing scenes are proficient, but they are nowhere near as brilliant as anything in Raging Bull, the film it obviously invites comparisons to. And unlike Scorsese's masterpiece little is made of the dramas behind the scenes.