Word: manne
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...cosmic moment in Ali, Michael Mann's sober and often stirring film biography, a perfect representation of the instinctive, almost visionary, shrewdness that lay beneath Ali's doggerel-spewing, hyperkinetic image. Bloodied and staggering under the blows of coarsely baying public opinion, he understood before most of us did that it was another kind of imagery--that selected by the media to symbolize the war to American civilians--that would determine the war's outcome and his own fate...
Perhaps the best thing about Mann's film (which he co-wrote with four others) is that it does not impose conventional motivations on Ali. It just lets him be, without a lot of back story or psychologizing. We don't learn, for example, exactly why he turned on Malcolm X, who had mentored him in Muslimism; we just suddenly see him do so. We don't know exactly what he and Howard Cosell saw in each other; we just see him and the sportscaster (Jon Voight in some rather grotesque makeup) juking and jiving--playing their own mutually advantageous...
...times when the film makes us hunger for more (or at least better connected) information. There are times in Will Smith's performance when you wish he would be a little less conscientious in his imitation of life, a little more, well, yes, instinctive in his performance. And Mann's reconstruction of the Rumble in the Jungle with Foreman can't match the lunatic intensity of Leon Gast's great documentary on the subject, When We Were Kings...
...still, there is also great sweetness and appeal in Smith's work; the supporting cast, led by Jamie Foxx's Drew (Bundini) Brown, is strong and real. The boxing sequences are superbly directed by Mann and ferociously enacted by Smith and a variety of sparring partners. And maybe the slight air of cautiousness that clings to this very conscientious film is a good thing. It does not brutally impose itself on the audience as so many big, riskily expensive films do. It permits us, in the audience, our own reflections not only about its subject but also about the times...
...Michael Mann takes a slice out of the boxing champion's life. It's the best part--when he was stripped of his title for refusing to join the Army in the Vietnam era, then won it (and our hearts) back. One of the rare biopics that lets us make up our own minds about the subject, this is a smart movie, crafty and handsomely crafted...