Director lands a hit with the right hook

While the performances are good, it's the director who makes 'Ali' spectacular.
By MILAN PAURICH
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENCE
I'll admit that I was skeptical going in. The thought of perennial lightweight Will Smith portraying heavyweight boxing champ Muhammad Ali in Michael Mann's $100-million "Ali" biopic sounded like somebody's idea of a bad joke. Plus, director Mann seemed to be suffering from Steven Spielberg's post-"E.T." malaise with his last film, 1999's overrated docudrama "The Insider."
Like Spielberg, who decided to tackle only "important" themes after losing the Oscar to "Gandhi," Mann abandoned genre fare after being robbed of an Oscar nomination for his 1995 masterpiece "Heat." Visions of previous heavy-handed, miscast botches like Jonathan Demme's "Beloved" or Spielberg's "Color Purple" danced before my eyes as I contemplated yet another two hour-plus end-of-the-year bid for Oscar gold. (Why is it that movies always get longer during the holidays? Probably because filmmakers confuse length with seriousness, and seriousness connotes Academy Awards.)
Surprise: All of my gloomy preconceptions proved to be baseless, however, since "Ali" scores a decisive knockout. The opening montage -- Sam Cooke performing onstage in 1964 as the life of Cassius Clay (before he became Muhammad Ali) is laid out before us -- is quite possibly the most technically skilled filmmaking I've seen in a Hollywood movie all year.
Mann's eye for the telling detail, and his tremendous skill at melding images with music (already evident in his stunning 1981 debut, "Thief," and perfected on his classic 1980's TV show "Miami Vice") continue to astonish.
Check out the dazzlingly experimental way he shoots and cuts Ali's boxing matches, stretching out the action at often grueling lengths for maximum impact. Mann incorporates avant garde techniques here (disconnected editing, a multi-layered soundtrack, varied film stocks, etc.) more successfully than any other mainstream director I can remember.
What makes "Ali" most remarkable is its story-behind-the-story approach to an oft-told tale. Clay's first meeting with Malcolm X (Mario Van Peebles), who teaches him not to turn the other cheek; the background of Clay's conversion to the Muslim faith -- including the politicking that went on behind the scenes among Nation of Islam leaders; the how and why of the draft ruckus that divided a nation when the champ refused to be drafted into the Army; his friendship with Howard Cossell (Jon Voight) that cut a lot deeper than their long-running vaudeville act on "Wide World of Sports" indicated; the relationship issues that contributed to Ali's marrying five times; and most spectacularly, 1974's fabled "Rumble in the Jungle" where everyone from Idi Amin to Don King played a role in the most momentous professional fight of the 20th century.
Reason for success: The performances are all good, but this is more of a director's showcase than it is an actor's movie. Smith doesn't particularly look or sound like Ali, but like Anthony Hopkins in Oliver Stone's "Nixon" (probably the last great impressionistic screen biography until this one), he gets inside his true-life personage's skin and becomes him. Voight makes a fine, blustery Cossell -- although his waxworks-like makeup takes some getting used to. Jamie Foxx finally delivers on his "Any Given Sunday" promise with a dynamic turn as trainer Drew "Bundini" Brown. And the superb Jeffrey Wright's eccentric line readings are a gas. I only wish that Wright, playing Ali confidante and professional photographer Howard Bingham, had been given more to do.
The script -- credited to six writers -- isn't perfect, and some of it feels patched together as if the release print was heavily edited from a much longer version. "Ali" is the rare marathon movie (it runs a quick 160 minutes) that you actually wish was longer. I guess we'll just have to wait for the director's cut on DVD.