User reviews

It is a good movie except for one problem. The movie Ali is a story that should have been told a long time ago. The production can not be criticised. Michael Mann direction is fabulous. Ali, the movie does suffer under the casting of Will Smith as Ali. Smith does not have the range or ability to portray this "living legend". In many scenes he look nervous and completely out of place. I am afraid that many people will like Smith as Ali because he is playing Ali. The other cast member suit there roles much better than Smith who unfortunately is the downfall of the movie. Smith does play Ali well in the boxing scenes.

This movie is totally boring. The movie is so damn long and there is not real action in this movie.

I was totally disappointed after I finished to watch this movie. Just because I drank a cup of coffee I finish this horrible movie.

I remember when this film was being hyped and promoted. The trailer seemed ubiquitous while perpetually appearing at the beginning of every film I had chosen to see in a span of perhaps a month of two. The first couple of times the trailer played, I thought to myself that it didn't really look all that appealing. In the next few weeks, I saw the same commercial and for some reason this time it was intriguing. How that was possible, I wasn't quite sure. But when I further examined the two trailers, I finally realized what was different.

It's amazing how music can affect you. One trailer was filled with soft playing, gospel like music. The next trailer assaulted our senses with hyped-up, outlandish hip-hop music. You can guess which trailer had what music. I mention this because it just goes to show you that when something is bad, it needs the marketing genius' that sell these products to us to discover a remedy instantly, hence the second trailer. I am a firm believer that every movie should be given a chance, which is why I see films like Gosford Park, Tea With Musollini and Ali. Every once in a while you discover diamonds in the ruff like Chocolat, more times than can be counted in one sitting, you get a film like Ali. Sometimes a first impression is the correct one.

The tag line for Ali advises us to forget everything we know about the man. Okay, I did that. Now maybe it is just me, but if a tag line tells me to do that then there must be a reason for it. Perhaps they are going to shock me with facts that have been uncovered that have never been made public. Oliver Stone is the master of that, Steven Spielberg can also lay claim to this theory. But Michael Mann? He has some work to do.

I am still waiting for the big eye opener. I have forgotten all that I know, now shock me.....

Ali is almost lugubrious in it's presentation of Muhammed Ali, the man. It takes a subject and a man that we all greatly admired and almost comically turns him into a caricature of his legend. I can honestly tell you that I walked out of Ali A) not knowing anything more about the man than I originally thought I did and B) disliking him more for who he seemed to be. Ali always came across as a man who marched to the beat of his own drum. A stoic, proud and principled man that made decisions based on what he thought was right. After seeing this film, that couldn't seem further from the truth. Will Smith's Ali appears to be puppet like as he gets swayed by Muslim beliefs and then betrayed by them only to be swayed once again. And this is the legend that we all lionized? What a sham!

Besides the story of Ali, the man, the story of Ali, the film, is really quite hollow. The script is practically infinitesimal and the more you watch and wait patiently to become enlightened with something, the more disappointed you are. Like a previous reviewer stated, I also came to this film to see Ali run his mouth and to get in the ring. Smith, while turning in a good performance, is denied greatness simply because the script doesn't give enough to work with. I read somewhere that the film is supposed to be defined by Ali's ethereal, almost dream-like run through Africa. Yet this run lasts for what seems like an eternity and when he is finished, I couldn't tell you what it is that he discovered about Africa or himself that he or we didn't already know. Sly's run through Philadelphia just before his big fight with Apollo was probably what this film was trying to emulate. And it did a very poor job of that. This is a microcosm of what is wrong with the picture. Too many intangible and uneven scenes and not enough insight and examination into one of the most famous men in the world. Hey, if you want to see how many women Ali bedded in his lifetime, then by all means, go see Ali. If you want to know why he became a Muslim or why his best friend, Drew Brown, turned to alcohol and drugs or how he spent all of his money or the amusing relationship Ali had with Howard Cosell or even more about the fight with George Foreman, then this is the wrong film for you.

Michael Mann really has a small resume for such an acclaimed and respected director. He was lauded for his work on The Insider and he managed to pull off Heat, with Kilmer, DeNiro and Pacino. I don't know the man personally and I am not saying he is a terrible director, but I just don't think he seems to grasp how to be poignant with his use of such highly regarded situations like Ali and the tobacco industries problem. The Insider, I believe, was a troubled film mainly because of Mann's direction. Perhaps his forte is gratuitous action and violence and perhaps he is not well suited to direct something that is supposed to be a great film like the one's he has done recently. And who knows, maybe it is just me. But Ali is quite a failure in my eyes.

3 out of 10 -- Will Smith is good but beyond his impersonation of the man, there is really not much to like or be inspired with in this film. Most who have seen this have taken umbrage with it. And calling this a classic film is more than just a little hyperbolic. It is not even a well made film.

This film is rubbish.

Ali was just a boxer from the South, but he's made out to be some folk hero with grave political charisma and beliefs.

Ali was a totally rude, impolite and obnoxious loud-mouth thug; that's all there is to it. All the political rubbish in the film about not wanting to kill Asians is fair enough but then why try and smash up your own race for money back home, eh? Ali was a moronic stooge who got wrapped up in a load of black activism which he didn't even understand.

The film is too long, the plot is non-existent, and the whole film is put together like some sort of episodic mini-narratives all stitched together. However, Will Young is a fine actor.

Performances stunning, did not know Van Peebles could act so beautifully.All good Giancarlo, Will etc. No content, no content, no content. Told me nothing I did not know and I know next to nothing!! Where is political/religious in depth? What was person- on- street's opinion, both black and white? Very angry that scenes from trailer are either not in movie or seen from different/useless angle.!!!!??? Am only 30 did not know much about this and would have liked some real info, do not care if Ali was a womanizer and I knew anyway!!!

I have been watching this film for 50 minutes and there is no story. If I am absolutely bored to tears tomorrow, maybe I will consider finishing it. The film itself is visually pleasing. The script is lacking in so many ways I can not begin to explain. For now, I would rather be sleeping.

I was really thinking that this movie would be a great movie telling us the amazing life of Mohammed Ali but no. I have never seen a movie portraying such a legend so awfully bad. A movie about such a big legend should have been way better the movie itself was really slow and boring and I don't think that the actors they choose to play the famous characters looked alike that made the movie suck even more.

I am a Mohammed Ali fan and will always be and let me just say am quite disappointed this is a bad movie that doesn't show us the real legacy that Mohammed Ali have left to us he is a person with humanity, charm and a powerful person with a lot to say in this movie we don't se any of the things he really are we see him weak, brutal and chasing other woman. That is not who Mohammed Ali is and we will always know who he really is but a movie is a documents that will always be saved in this earth and let's just say that this movie is literally trash.

Ali (2001) -

I find boxing incredibly dull at the best of times, so perhaps this wasn't the right viewing choice for a weekday evening. However I thought that it deserved a chance as I was sure that I'd heard good things about it and there certainly seemed to be a lot of hype about it when it was released. However, the extra long scene of the first boxing match against Sonny Liston was so boring that I could see very early on that the rest of the film would not be my thing. I think that I actually preferred some of the 'Rocky' (1976) films to this one. At least Sly Stallone's character had that struggle from the gutter going for him.

I actually used to have some respect for Muhammad Ali, based on 'Parkinson' (1971-2007) interviews and other clips that I'd seen of him, but actually his arrogance, rudeness and the belief in himself shown in this film got to be a bit too much for me. I didn't actually think it showed him very well at all and mostly just because of his actual actions, his behaviour towards women, some of which were related to his religious views and his demands on people, almost seeming that he expected to be worshipped and that he was owed the freedom to do what he wanted just because he was built to take punches. His aggression got really pathetic and tired very quickly too.

And I'm not sure that Will Smith delivered the part for me either. I almost felt that I was watching a film about Will's real life instead, because he didn't seem to be playing a character. Of course I'm not casting aspersions on his real persona, just saying that he delivered the script in quite a Will Smith way. He also didn't really look to be in the right shape to play a boxer either.

Perhaps the producers and directors were the ones at fault though, for their choice to make this film to only show Ali over a ten year period. A time when, for the most part, he wasn't allowed to box. It actually skimmed over the more acknowledgeable achievements with a quick note at the end of the film.

I'm actually starting to get annoyed with biopics that don't tell the whole story, because I have no idea where Ali came from or what happened to him after his boxing career, but just a rather bleh view of ten, not so exciting, years in the middle. 'Stan & Ollie' (2018) did the same thing focussing on the ends of Laurel & Hardy's lives and not showing the exciting times that they surely must have had making their films in Hollywood and I know that there are other flicks out there that aren't covering everything. If it's really that hard to do, make a series of films or TV shows, because I don't think that this film showed me the real Ali or gave a balanced view of him. Seeing his younger years may have made me more sympathetic to his behaviour later on? I don't know, because it wasn't shown.

I didn't get the Malcolm X references and history either, because I haven't watched that film yet. And perhaps there was too much focus on him, which took away from Ali's life. It just didn't seem to have that something going for it and it's an incredibly slow film too.

It wasn't even a good film about racism or a good film about boxing, but an amalgamation of too much of this and not enough of that. In fact I saw a better episode of 'Quantum Leap' (1989-93) that covered the riots shown in this one and it got that point across far better.

This film was just lacking any energy so that I couldn't find any interest in it and I started counting the minutes until the end.

I think that they were trying to find the same excitement and thrill of 'Dreamgirls' (2006) or 'What's Love Got To Do With It' (1993), because that was the vibe that came across, but they desperately failed in my opinion.

The film could have been about half an hour shorter too, if they'd cut out all the unnecessary filler and slow-mo pauses.

I will never have that time back again.

218.94/1000.

When Milos Forman released his Man on the Moon, people gave him grief for having simply dramatized what anyone could have seen in the latest VH1 documentary. Michael Mann's ALI falls short of even Man on the Moon... and Mann has When We We're Kings to reckon with. There are only two lessons ALI teaches: 1. Will Smith is only a believable ALI impersonator when he is speaking--email me if you honestly thought he reminded you of Muhammad when he didn't have dialogue as his crutch. 2. Never have I wanted to rescreen Spike Lee's MALCOLM X more than after ALI.

This movie entailed 100+ snippets and clips supposedly to be tied together with the sound track. When you yearned for more information you were given little, when you wanted the clip to end, it roamed on forever. There was no character development, no story line to follow. When Malcolm X died I felt no emotion, the same when Ali would toss aside one wife for another, I didn't care. The upside that prevented me from demanding my money back was that Will Smith was terrific and Jamie Foxx was surprisingly remarkable. Both would have done better to have performed their roles in a coherent movie about Ali.