Ali (2001)

Michael Mann's Ali covers ten years in the life of Muhammad Ali, from the 1964 upset over Sonny Liston to the Rumble in the Jungle a decade later. Will Smith put on weight and learned to box, and the fight sequences use actual heavyweight fighters instead of the usual cinematic sleight of hand. The result is a somber, patient film. Roger Ebert called it a eulogy, and he was not wrong. Mann's camera lingers on the man's isolation more than on his wit.

The political material is substantial, and it belongs to the subject. The Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, the refusal of conscription, the stripping of the title, the years away from the ring, the journey to Kinshasa and the presence of Mobutu: this is the historical record, dramatized with care. The cast is largely Black because the story requires it, not because a studio issued a memo. Women appear as wives and romantic interests, Sonji Roi, Belinda Boyd, Veronica Porché, and they occasionally push back, though the film's attention never leaves its subject. There is no engagement with queer life, environmental anxiety, body image, neurodivergence, or the sins of capital. Ali's objection to the war was theological and anti-colonial, not economic.

The speeches are Ali's own, delivered as dialogue, so the sermonizing never arrives from the present day. The film dramatizes events without refashioning them for contemporary instruction. It cost a great deal and earned back very little. A solemn monument, then, and monuments have their place.