ALI **1/2 (out of ****) Starring Will Smith, Jon Voight, Jamie Foxx, Mario Van Peebles, Ron Silver, Joe Morton, Jada Pinkett Smith, Ted Levine, Giancarlo Esposito, and Mykelti Williamson. Directed and co-written for the screen by Michael Mann. 2001 R The two-and-a-half star rating is made for films like Michael Mann’s “Ali.”  Here is a movie with moments of brilliance:  great acting, gorgeously-composed shots, stunning impressionist montages, breathtaking boxing sequences, and an atmosphere so detached as to be hypnotic, even haunting.  Like Terence Malick’s “The Thin Red Line” and “Days of Heaven,” “Ali” tells its story obliquely, knowing that sometimes what we remember from the crucial times of our lives aren’t always the turning points, but those moments right before and after, that what we remember aren’t what the important people in our lives said, but how they looked saying it, how we shared space with them, how we could sit next to them and tell jokes.  “Ali” has many such moments, in which the life of a great man is seen in almost random instants, because how we dispose of random moments and what thoughts we think during them often outweigh our momentous decisions.  We see him (Will Smith) in at least two jogging sequences during the film, and we see, during the hypnosis of physical exertion, that Ali is digesting the world around him, and he isn’t quite sure what to make of it. The opening montage and fight are among director Mann’s best images.  Ali, still called Cassius Clay, is on his way to a fight, but rather than giving us a contrived Hollywood pep talk, Mann gives us a stream-of-consciousness sequence that is nothing short of brilliant.  In no order besides the rule of the half-dreaming mind, we see young Cassius following his father to the colored section of a Kentucky bus, we see him at a rally with Malcolm X (Mario Van Peebles), we see him riding to the fight with his trainer (Ron Silver) and advisor (Jamie Foxx), we see him as a boy watching his father paint a blonde-haired blue-eyed Jesus, we see him jogging, we see the nightclub party where he met his first wife.  Then he strides into the ring.  This sequence literally left me with a slack-jawed grin.  It reminded me of nothing so much as high school band auditions, when I would perform the tryout music and then suddenly become lost in my own mind while I played, hearing other pieces and visiting other places, all jumbled, even while I played my best. What you’re expecting me to write next is “if only the rest of the movie had been like that!”  But, oddly enough, the whole movie is like that, and that’s the problem.  While this sort of impressionism may be superb in small or even large doses, it doesn’t work as an entire meal.  What “Ali” lacks is a sense of storytelling outside of these impressions.  Because everything in Ali’s life is seen so obliquely there are few handholds of plot for us to grab onto.  After about two-and-a-half hours of film I had only a dim understanding of his conflicts with the draft board, with the Nation of Islam, with his public image, and with Malcolm X.  Like Scorsese’s “Raging Bull,” each of the three boxing fights we see in the film has a personal significance to Ali outside of him merely pounding the other guy, but I could not satisfactorily decipher what they were.  Unlike, for instance, “The Thin Red Line,” in which we are periodically sat down, lifted from the sideways-seen philosophy, and reminded about what’s going on, “Ali” takes no such steps.  Instead we are adrift in scene after scene in which something crucial might be taking place, maybe in the next room, we just can’t figure out what it is.  No amount of period soul music or hand-held camera work can replace the historical context that “Ali” is missing.
		The result is that Ali comes across as a basically decent man with some problems keeping it in his pants, but who is not worldly enough to know what is happening around him.  He is an important man tossed on the currents of fate and those around him.  Being born after the pinnacle of Ali’s career, and it therefore being one of the many parts of American history I simply haven’t had the time to explore, I cannot speak for the film’s historical or biographical accuracy.  I have no idea if Ali the Real Person was as tossed on the sea of fate as Ali the Character.  What I can judge is the internal consistency of Ali the Character, who is indeed a well-drawn and complex man, even if he is (or isn’t) a work of fiction.  Smith’s portrayal of Ali is among the year’s best, as a man of quick wit, almost indescribable determination, and an unbearable certainty of his greatness.  He loves the sound of his own voice, be it in the metered rhymes of his public self or the easily distracted uncertainties of his private self. As for the rest of the cast:  Jamie Foxx’s introduction is a stunning, almost-dreamy monologue to the Champ that mixes prophecy, humor, faith, and attitude, and for the rest of the film Foxx can only be described as “a character” (with “Ali” and “Any Given Sunday” it seems Foxx may be making a career out of good performances in uneven sports epics).  Jon Voight plays the late sportscaster Howard Cosell, one of the few straightshooters in Ali’s life, who is neither sycophantic nor offensive, but paternal toward the fighter who may have lost his way.  Mario Van Peebles, so often wasted in fare such as “Gunmen” and “Highlander III,” redeems himself as Malcolm X, whom he portrays in a vein similar to Smith’s Ali, as a conflicted man not so much in charge of his life as a socio-political commodity subject to the whims of others.  The rest of the supporting cast is equally solid, as they always are in Mann’s films, seen mostly as men in suits with a lot on their minds and uncertain how to communicate it. Plenty of ideas are floated through “Ali,” chief among them that boxing is fair while life is unfair.  Ali is deceived and used again and again, but never in the ring, and never by those to whom boxing is more than just a profession.  His dodging of the draft causes all manner of professional problems, but it is Smoking Joe Frazier, his opponent, who wants him back in the ring, it is his trainer who stands by him, and it is the sportscaster Cosell who wants to protect him. Perhaps one day the magic of DVD will provide us with a more focused version of “Ali,” highlighting its strengths and dropping its weaknesses.  Discussing the film with my wife after having seen it, we pondered ways in which it could be rescued.  If “Ali” had been all this at about ninety minutes, we agreed it would have been a sweeping impressionist piece.  Yes, this hypothetical version would be just as vague, but at ninety minutes we would have seen it as “artistic” as opposed to “frustrating.”  Another option would be to keep the film at its current length and throw the audience an occasional bone, let them know what the historical context is, let them peak into the next room.  As “Ali” is, it is a film of many, many very good parts, and in retrospect I can’t think of it having any bad parts.  What’s missing are the other parts to connect the existing good parts together.  I want to like this movie more than I do and I admire Mann’s directorial daring more than I actually enjoyed watching it.  “Ali” is a near miss, but any film that creates an aura such as this, and is even a little haunting, cannot be without value. Finished March 6, 2002. Copyright 2002 Friday & Saturday Night
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