Ali

ALI

I'll be straight up honest right now, I love boxing. Boxing is a sport where I feel I can always find a clear winner and that nothing is ever left to a tie. It's a sport that demands someone to push themselves to the absolute limit of their physical capabilities in order to rival the abilities of their opponent. Many people in the modern era believe boxing to be a brutal sport for barbaric numskulls who never received a proper education. While the latter portion of that statement may be true, I will argue that boxing is one of the most beautiful sports in human history. It takes a special person to be a great boxer, a person with grit, determination, a will of steel, the heart of a lion, and the strategic mind of a Centurion. There are no excuses, the better man will always win.

Muhammad Ali is one of the finest examples of what defines the term "boxer". Considered the "Greatest Of All Time" for all the right reasons, Ali's life is the perfect story for a fresh take on the boxing movie genre. Almost every movie regarding boxers and their craft involve them living in a crime infested section of a major city with no hopes or dreams and suddenly they get the chance of a lifetime that can only be achieved by two hours of personal conflicts and at least one ten minute training montage with an 80's power rock song in the background (I'm looking at you Rocky). The other type of boxing movie doesn't actually really involve the sport at all, but utilizes the sport as a way for a scrawny child to beat up bullies (Damn you Knockout). However, Muhammad Ali's story is a bit different in a surprisingly refreshing way as evidenced in Ali.

Tackling a biopic is one of the toughest challenges any director can face. The goal of a biopic is to visually tell the story of a famous/infamous person's life as accurately as possible and I don't mean accurate in just the way the story is told. The acting MUST be solid and the actors MUST look like their real life counterparts. In fact, I'd go as far to say that getting the physical appearances is the absolute most important part of a biopic. If you get it wrong, the audience will know and you can be damn sure that it'll make them uncomfortable. If you get the appearances right then you can pretty much do damn well whatever you please when it comes to telling a story, for example take a look at Public Enemies, the biopic about the infamous bank robber John Dillinger.

One of those men pictures is a man who refuses to pay taxes, steals money from the federal government, and isn't afraid to get his knuckles skinned in the regular brawl or two. The other is a bank robber. While I may have exaggerated a little about one of them, it's no doubt that with enough people slapping his face with makeup and a wicked mustache Johnny Depp looks an awful lot like Dillinger except Dillinger wasn't a fucking weirdo in real life. And those eyebrows. Depp just can't grow eyebrows. Gah, I'm getting off topic! Anyone who's ever done a little research after seeing Public Energies (See what I did there? You thought I was going to say enemies!!) knows that while most biopics do a little exaggerating here and there, the director actually toned down the visual telling of Dillinger's life! In the honest truth, Dill Winger's life is more epic than the Django Unchained soundtrack. I won't go into specifics but you can do almost anything you want to a person's life in a biopic as long as you get the resemblance and nobody will give a flying fuck! You wanna see Mike Tyson wrestle an alligator on the silver screen? As long as you have Jamie Foxx with a tattoo on his face you can totally do that!

If any of you cast Jamie Foxx in a Mike Tyson biopic, I demand royalties. My idea assholes!

I suppose the point I'm trying to arrive at here is that casting Will Smith as Muhammad Ali was a great decision and while Jamie Foxx is still in our minds, he plays another boxing personality most of us know as Drew Bundini Brown and the resemblance is actually kinda scary. Like, more scary than the random historically accurate bald patch on the top of his character's head. 

When I stated earlier that Ali is a refreshing new story for the boxing movie genre, I wasn't kidding. The first way this movie breaks the genre stereotype is that Muhammad Ali didn't grow up a poverty stricken child who took up boxing to get off the streets. In fact, he started boxing because some kid stole his bike and he wanted to learn how to whoop ass as effectively as possible. The director, Michael Mann, didn't waste a single moment of the film trying to make the audience feel sorry for Ali because we didn't need to. Instead, Mann took a different approach where he successfully portrayed Ali as a stubborn, cocky-yet-focused, and determined man. In other words, he made Will Smith become Muhammad Ali, notice that I said become. Many good biopics feature a good actor acting like the person they're supposed to but a truly great biopic has an actor becoming the person they portray. Daniel Day Lewis is famous for becoming Abraham Lincoln and it's truly a great performance but Will Smith absolutely blows it out of the water. Will Smith learned Ali's fight style from the man himself, learned to talk exactly like him, and even learned how to move his feet in the ring like Muhammad Ali... Hell he sculpted his body to an exact Ali replica... FUCK THE MAKEUP DEPARTMENT STARED AT TONS OF PHOTOGRAPHS OF FIGHTS TO GET THE FUCKING BRUISES EXACTLY RIGHT. That's not just dedication from the director, that's called love. 

Anyways, the movie is a memoir that covers the events of Ali's life from his first encounter as Cassius Clay when he faced Sonny Liston for the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship. The movie continues with his relationship with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., his joining of the Black Muslim Brotherhood, his refusal to be drafted into Vietnam, his three marriages, his second fight with Sonny Liston, his loss against Joe Fraizer, and the film concludes with the legendary "Rumble In The Jungle" championship fight against George Foreman. Probably one of my favorite parts about this movie is the classic ABC interviews and weigh-ins where Mann makes sure Will Smith quips classic one liners and barrages of clever insults that will put a smile on anyone's face. Will Smith channels Ali's humorous side and his serious defiant side brilliantly and with perfect execution. There isn't a person alive who didn't chuckle a little inside when they watched Will Smith portray Muhammad Ali shaking away his nerves and running out to tell Sonny Liston that he'll "beat the ugliness right out of you. It'll take a long time, but I'll do it!".

The film is accompanied by a soundtrack consisting of black gospel music and I've gotta say, it's pretty rock solid. Some of the songs are very catchy and will still be in your head long after you close out of the Netflix browser. 

The only fault I can really say about Ali is that there are certain sections of the film that just seem to drag at times. It kind of reminds me of Breaking Bad in the sense that the movie will throw heavy drama at you all at once and then you'll sit through about a half an hour of slow paced conversations before reaching the big fight night. I guess this might be to keep the audience excited about the fights, but this movie is not short by any means. Ali has a run time of two hours and forty-five minutes and it takes its time. The most annoying part is right towards the end when the film is building up for the Foreman fight and there's a ten minute slow motion scene of Ali running the African countryside. There's no talking or anything really dramatic, it's mostly just Ali looking at graffiti on walls and looking at locals. But I can't hit this scene too hard because it's trying to establish that the African people are HIS people and he's THEIR champion.

Final Verdict:

With the exception of a few slow paced scenes, Ali is an excellent biopic that almost perfectly visualize the most important parts of the great Muhammad Ali's storied boxing career. Michael Mann delivers a knockout punch with this masterpiece of a film.

9.5/10