Rating: 
Summary: THE REAL FIGHT
Review: Why you may ask a movie about ALI?After all,you can still view most of his championship fights on vidéo.The reason is that it gives WILL SMITH a good part to play.I didn't really appreciate the opening montage and this crosscutting with a SAM COOKE concert.I think that they wanted to show the emergence of black people in the sixties.I especially liked parts of the film like those funny press conferences in which ALI demonstrates his acting ability.If you actually accept what the script wants you to beleive,ALI is basically a womanizer.The religious aspect and the army jinks could not be tossed apart, simply because they really were an important issue at the time.Overall,this film should not mesmerize you to a degry of greatness.Still,WILL SMITH certainly trows knockout acting punches and makes it worth viewing.Honours should also go to JON VOIGHT and the creator of the HOWARD COSSELL facial mask.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: In the words of Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) in "On The Waterfront", this coulda been a contenda. But somehow it falls short of its potential. My main gripe with this film is what most people praise it for. Will Smith. I think Smith was somehow overwhelmed by this role. He doesn't deliver that witty repertoire like the man himself. His voice actually trails off a lot of the time. Listen carefully and you'll see what I mean. Likewise, that expression on his face...He looks perpetually scared! I know many will disagree with me, but I think Smith was the wrong choice to play Ali. Michael Mann directed the excellent "The Insider" so I was expecting more from this film. It isn't really much more than a retrospective of part of Ali's career. And most people know this part of the story. Ali wins the heavyweight title, converts to Nation of Islam, befriends Howard Cosell, gets screwed by the system, comes back and beats Foreman. No surprises there. I was REALLY hoping the film would have focused on the more interesting and tragic part of Ali's career that followed the fight in Zaire. You know, when he got older, fought Frazier in Manila, turned to Sunni Islam, lost and regained the title from Leon Spinks, got screwed over by Don King, came back to fight Larry Holmes but was humiliated, retired and suffered from Parkinsons Syndrome, lit the torch at Atlanta, etc. I was hoping for more of a biopic kind of feel. "Ali" disappoints in this regard. It only focuses on 1966-1972. This is a shame. I think they could have shortened some of the fight scenes. I mean, this wasn't supposed to be a "Rocky" film but rather a film about Ali the man. "Ali" is stylish and if you don't know a lot about Ali, you might enjoy this. I mean, it's a fascinating story up to that point. It's just something that's been told over water coolers and even at lecture halls all these years that you probably already know it. Jamie Foxx's portrayal of Drew Bundini is great. I keep raving about how talented Mr. Foxx is. The way he took an obscure character and made it his own is remarkable. It might be worth waiting for this to air on cable just to see Foxx's performance. I should add that the soundtrack for this movie is very good. If you like old time jazz/funk, just get the movie soundtrack. So forget Ali. There's a James J. Braddock movie coming out next year. Let's hope they don't screw that up. BOXING RULES!
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: Muhammed Ali is the greatest and will always be the greatest boxer that ever lived! This movie was wonderful in portraying the life of such a powerful individual. Throughout the movie all I could think of was that words have power -- it was the power of his WORDS that made Muhammed Ali great . . . Because his words proclaimed him into being the Heavy Weight Champion of the World again and again!
Rating:
Summary: Will...not disappoint !
Review: Will Smith and Michael Mann take on Muhammed Ali with maximum perfection. The movie never fails. It tells the story of the rise of the greatest athlete that ever lived into the boxing world, his victories in both the Rumble In The Jungle and Thrilla In Manilla, his funny confrontations with Howard Cosell, who is remarkably impersonated and portayed by Jon Voight, and his many wives, which Ali refers to as a "weakness towards women". The only weakness about this DVD is the extra features segment...there are no features! I sure would have liked to see a behind the scenes segment, or an interview with Will or Ali himself with their thoughts regarding the movie. The music video by R Kelly would have also been nice to have here. But the film which is almost 3 hours is a great viewing experience. With one star off the rating for an empty DVD, Ali is the one of the strongest films out there today. I'd highly recommend the special edition DVD that I hope Columbia Pictures is planning to release soon. But until then, this DVD version is a must-have!
Rating: 
Summary: Lets change our name because we're a sissy...
Review: this guy doesnt deserve to have his name printed on the cover of a movie. Between his racist, black panther life and his draft dodging alter ego they should have burned him at the stake years ago......stupid peanut head.
Rating:
Summary: Ali nothing special
Review: Going into "Ali", a Micheal Mann film, I thought this was going to be an absolutely great movie. As the credits began to roll however, I was a little dissapointed. The movie is very sluggish and seems to be forever explaining itself. It is also not what most people I have talked to expected. There isn't enough fighting, and I'm sorry but that's what was selling the movie from the beginning...Will Smith in the ring. I probably wouldn't recommend this movie to many, but you may enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: Michael Mann's visual poem on the life of the champ
Review: The ad campaign for Ali focused on Will Smith's Oscar nominated portrayal of Muhammed Ali, but in the end I found this to really be director Michael Mann's film. Like "The Last of the Mohicans," this is also a film where the leading man looks intently while the music surges. Mann has always been enamored of letting music carry a moment (first evidenced by his use of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" for the climatic scene of "Manhunter") and "Ali" is certainly no exception. The film begins with a montage of Cassius Clay out running as part of his training for his first title fight with Sonny Liston mixed with images of formative influences on Clay growing up and Sam Cooke (David Elliott) performing in a Harlem nightclub. Unfortunately, the film never reaches this high initial peak again during the rest of the film. "Ali" is not a traditional biopic in that those who know little about the champ's life are not going to understand what is going on. The strategy of mouthing off at every opportunity to convince Liston that the young Cassius Clay was psychotic or the "rope a dope" tactic that Ali used to defeat George Foreman (Charles Shufford), are implicit at best. In this regard the film clearly works better with those who know enough of Ali's life to fill in the pieces (the scene were Ali are Joe Frazier (James Toney) drive around in a car together planning their first fight was one of the film's few revelations for me). Mann creates something of a patterned mosaic, where there are fights, women, and interviews with Howard Cosell (Jon Voight), while Malcolm X (Mario Van Peebles) and Martin Luther King, Jr. are gunned down. What cuts through this is Ali's refusal to be drafted into the Army to go and fight in Vietnam. At the end of the film as Ali trains for the "Rumble in Jungle" his run through the streets of Zaire reprises the opening but the repetition rings hollow. There are scenes where Smith gets to spout off some of Ali's wonderful rants, but it is clearly established that this is not the "real" Ali. The moments in the film when we think we glimpse the real man are, paradoxically, not those in which he is talking but those in which he is quiet, his eyes taking in the world around him and leaving it to us to figure out what is going on in his mind. If there is any moment in the film where Ali is laid bared it is when he is punishing Ernie Terrell (Alfred Cole) for having called him Clay: Ali refuses to finish his opponent off, hitting Terrell again and again, repeatedly shouting "What's my name?" I also want to take Mann to task for having reduced the first fight with Frazier to the end of the fight, choosing to omit the shocking image of Ali on the canvas, wearing those shoes with the tassels. Especially since this is a film that takes the time to give the audience a sense in the final fight of how long Ali let Foreman pound on him against the ropes, waiting for the right moment. Fortunately, a lot of the film's faults are covered by Smith's performance, which has been deservedly praised for avoiding the pitfalls of caricature. Ali's legion of fans will enjoy this film more than others, but in the end "Ali" falls short of being as epic as the man himself.
Rating:
Summary: The Greatest on the Greatest
Review: Michael Mann's Ali is the best portrait of this man I have seen to date. A courageous casting choice of Will Smith in the role of Ali was a stroke of genius. I would put this film right up there with SHADOW BOXERS, the incredible award-wining documentary about women's boxing which focuses on the closest thing to an Ali that exisits in women's boxing, the charismatic, insightful and gorgeous women's champ Lucia Rijker.
Rating:
Summary: Hard to make a great film about a great man.
Review: Some films are made great by their by action, others by being a great story, others by the soundtrack or special effects. This movie like a few others was made by one characterization. Will Smith IS Muhammad Ali, primarily because he has worked to make Ali's voice and inflections his own. It is an incredibly convincing performance, and to the reviewer who said that Smith could not capture Ali, I ask whom he would suggest instead? It is hard for me to disagree more with another Amazon[.com] colleague, and I would instead concur with another reviewer who noted this film shows the ability to have a single Oscar-caliber performance in a film which even the biggest fans acknowledge is not likely to be the best film of the year. I guess the real challenge accepted and dealt with admirably by Director Michael Mann comes with making a film about not just someone we all know, but THE most recognized person in the world.. How can this story be told in just two hours? As some of the detractors have made clear, this is a tough task. But Mann did a great job, in my opinion.
Where to start this story; and where to end it? No mention of the young boy's going to learn to box after some neighborhood kids humiliate him by stealing his bicycle. No mention (rather surprisingly) of his Olympic gold medal and the even more significant return to the States where he threw his medal into a river in protest of racial mistreatment. And even once we get that issue resolved, where to end this saga? How about Summer, 1996 in Atlanta, with the Champ holding the Olympic torch (or even better, at a preliminary boxing match in those same Olympics when an incredibly bitter Joe Frazier was, when introduced, met by cheers of "Ali, Ali!"). This is by no means a criticism, because this one incredible life is far too large to capture in one movie. Those who lament the lack of great boxing misunderstand what the film and Ali were all about. He transcended his sport in a manner that no athlete has in the past fifty years (and perhaps ever). America in the 1960's, racism, and the draft were far larger issues and more formidable competitors for him than Liston, Frazier, Foreman could have been if he had to fight all three one after the other! If all he had done was fight and defeat them, he would have been just one more name in the record books. This leads to my only real substantive lament: While the "Rumble in the Jungle" was a singular and a true epic event, I think the three Frazier bouts were the greatest one-on-one competitions in the history of sport, and were among the defining moments of their respective careers. For this reason, I would have like to have seen more time devoted to that relationship. Great supporting actors. Before seeing this, I could not imagine Jon Voight as Howard Cosell (just like Will Smith, Voight also made this role his own merely with the use of tonal inflection). Ditto the efforts of Jamie Foxx as Drew Bundini Brown. Mario Van Peebles would have been memorable as Malcolm X, but for the fact that we ALL know that he could never again be portrayed after the efforts of Denzel Washington. Just like the Man himself, some people liked him, and some people hated him. Not surprisingly, the reviews turned our correspondingly. It is, as noted a better than respectful telling of the life of a great figure in the history of America. For my money it was worthwhile, and I enjoyed it more the second and third time.
Rating:
Summary: Ali - can't get any better
Review: I don't think that, for most people, this film will ever measure up to the real Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali was so reveared and admired as a human being that people are expecting this outstanding film to blow your mind away. It sure blew my mind away, but for some reason alot of people in the world says it didn't do that. "It was boring and long and drawn out." Not really! I would dare say that Muhammad Ali, while on the set, told Michael Mann exactly what was going during every part of his life. Maybe what we see as "Long and Drawn out" might avtually be the REAL way it happened.
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