Stings Like a Bee?
By Michael Sean McGowan

In the new bio "Ali," Michael Mann and Will Smith pull their share of punches, and it is the audiences that gets TKO-ed. (Film Review)

    The problem with turning a life, any life, into a film is a conflict of medium. Film, essentially, is a format of the moment. I think back to a dialogue I recently saw in Waking Life in which a man explains his theory that writing in film tends to be ineffective because it is more literary and story based, rather than recognizing that motion pictures work best by feeding sensation milliseconds at a time. Looking back at Lord of the Rings, which some purists have chastised for ignoring Tolkien’s lengthy expository structure, this begins to make more and more sense.
 

    The few film biographies that have worked wonders on the screen (Patton, Malcolm X) hide the plethora of those that, for one reason or another, just didn’t work (anyone remember that John Belushi film bio?). And more times than not, it is the structure that defeats them. How do you take a life- a series of feelings, actions, and motivations that span decades and compress them into a coherent sensation structure in less than three hours?
Ali doesn’t span decades, although the sensation of sitting through the film might incline one to argue. It opens with a little-known, trash-talking Cassius Clay snatching the World Heavyweight title from Sonny Liston and ends with a more somber Muhammad Ali triumphing over George Foreman in the “Rumble in the Jungle.” The problem with Ali is that the A to Z is not clear, not focused. In fact, I think it would be overstating the film’s coherency to invoke the alphabet at all. Where it should have been revealing, Ali is clueless, shapeless, and unfocused. Where it should have been compelling, it is painfully dull.
 

    There is just no conviction in this film and where that is lacking we have actors not inhabiting their roles, but simply pretending to be other people. Michael Mann did wonders with this in The Insider with a very un-Mike Wallace looking Christopher Plummer conjuring up the news icon’s stalwart stubbornness. Here, we have Jon Voight how is made up so severely to look like Howard Cossell that he looks more like an overgrown youngster in his father’s Halloween costume. Will Smith doesn’t fair much better- yes, he may have Ali’s surface in-your-face pompousness down cold, but too often it is hard to differentiate it from Smith’s own motor-mouth charisma. Go back and give Patch Adams another look and ask yourself if you see Robin Williams playing Patch Adams or Robin Williams playing Patch Adams played by Robin Williams (on second thought, don’t).
Adrift, with no sense of itself, Ali becomes a greatest-hits placard sold through television infomercials. Momentous Things happen- and are tucked away or forgotten about completely. Early in the film we witness Ali’s father go on a tirade about his son forsaking his name. And then what happens? Who knows. More tedious is the parade of lovers and wives who Ali marries only to suffer heartbreak and leave at the drop of a hat. Given more screen time but less exploration is Ali’s relationship with the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X, played toothlessly by an uncomfortable looking Mario Van Peebles.
 

    The frustrations of Ali beg more questions than they answer. Where did the Champ fit in the scheme of a country being torn apart by racial strife and war? What did his refusal to be drafted mean in a society in which complacency and patriotism were assumed to go hand in hand? And what of boxing, itself? Was Ali a transcender, a byproduct, or just another cog of a machine that ground up many young men in the pursuit of the dollar.
Ali certainly isn’t the worst movie of the year, it wouldn’t even be in the top five, but it is a major disappointment. In the 1990s, Michael Mann racked up a winning streak with Last of the Mohicans, Heat, and The Insider that Steven Soderburgh would be envious of. But Ali feels like an abort- a project that its handlers felt was going to hell long ago. Maybe it was pointless to make the movie in the first place. Muhammad Ali is a cipher- a man too complex for anyone to know or understand completely- which does not justify creating a film with the same characteristics. C