 |
Out of Left Field |
|
|
 WILL SMITH as ALI |
Will Smith superb as Ali
both in and out of the ring
of TheColumnists.com
As one who covered Muhammad Ali in his pre and post
Cassius Marcellus Clay days, I was interested to see the new
film, “Ali.” I was prepared to dislike it probably
because of all the hype leading up to it. Actually, I didn’t
dislike it, and would give it this capsule review:
Excellent performance
by Will Smith. He captures Ali’s voice inflections outside
the ring and is so good at imitating Ali’s style inside
the ring that on some long shots, I would have believed they
used actual sequences from Ali’s fights. Uncommonly good
in the same way are the boxer-actors who adapted the styles of
Sonny Liston (Michael Bentt), Joe Frazier (James Toney) and George
Foreman (Charles Shufford). The opening , intercutting a rousing
Sam Cooke night club performance with the first Ali-Liston fight
gets the movie off to a pulsating start, but it bogs down late
with an endless scene of Ali trotting through the streets of
Zaire. “Ali” is too long. Movies about current figures
generally are completely unbelievable, but this, in my view,
is probably 85 per cent accurate in dealing with the events in
Ali’s life. I give the movie three stars.
Events in Ali’s life came back to me during certain scenes.
In the early days of Clay, when he was an irrepressible popoff,
I was one of the young Chipmunks among the press who enjoyed
his antics, his outrageous poetry. I wanted him to beat the 7-1
favored Liston in that first fight and even would have predicted
he would do so except for a conversation at dinner a few nights
before the fight with his trainer, Angelo Dundee, and backer
Bill Faversham. They said he needed a few fights before he would
be ready for Liston and lamented that he wanted the bout at this
time. They persuaded me and I came to regret I picked Liston,
not that this mattered a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.
The film shows Ali acting up at the weigh-in for the Liston fight.
He always acted up, but this time he seemed to go beyond the
pale, much more than is seen here. So much so that I came to
believe the young man had flipped out and would be lucky to even
show up. The doctor’s report that his blood pressure went
through the roof helped persuade me. So I was stunned by his
calm behavior when he came into the ring and proceeded about
his momentous business of chopping down Liston.
At one point in tbe fight, something got into Ali’s eyes,
blinding him. It has never been proved conclusively how this
happened. The movie goes for the theory that the people in Liston’s
corner put some substance on Sonny’s glove and that Liston
rubbed it onto Ali’s eyes. Nobody knows.
Ali put on an amazing performance while blinded that the movie
doesn’t quite capture. For most of the round he extended
his left hand into Liston’s forehead and held him off as
he circled away. He did this till almost the end of the round
when his sight cleared and he was able to punch back. Soon after,
Liston quit in his corner.
I could do without the screen writer’s love affair with
Howard Cosell, played ably by Jon Voight. Cosell serves as a
good vehicle for humor, but he is given an inordinate role in
Ali’s career. Cosell was not the only defender of Ali when
he was under fire for refusing to go into the army, but Cosell
always acted as if he was the only one. John Crittenden of the
Miami News, Bud Collins of the Boston Globe, Len Shecter of the
New York Post, Larry Merchant and Jack McKinney of the Philadelphia
News and I, among others, spoke out and wrote in defense of Ali.
The movie needed more Angelo Dundee, less Howard Cosell.
We, who were against the Vietnam War at the time, so admired
Ali’s refusal to serve in the army, that we probably overlooked
the fact that his first instinct not to serve was probably not
political, but selfish. When he first received word that he was
reclassified 1-A , his first reaction was to lament that he,
as the heavyweight champion, should be targeted. Later, probably
coaxed by wise heads like Malcom X, he made his savvy statements
noting that he had nothing against the Vietcong and that he objected
to black people killing yellow people. He undoubtedly came to
believe that and deserved the world-wide adulation that came
to him.
The script pinned down Zaire leader Mobotu bleeding his people,
while heaping millions on the Ali-Foreman promotion with the
device of having Ali’s second wife scolding him for being
a part of it. It is doubtful that his wife, Belinda, was that
shrewd, but it served as excellent shorthand to make the point
about Mobotu squirreling away millions in Switzerland while his
people suffered.
 |
predicting a knockout and naming the round |
Watching Ali rope-a-dope to victory against Foreman in the final moments of the movie raised the irony of the lives of the two men today. Ali, battered by too many punches, is a pitiful figure, hardly able to talk, who commands sympathy because of what Parkinson’s disease has done to his body. Foreman, who was little more than a clod in his early days, is a shrewd, witty millionaire, a commercial spokesman, a commentator on HBO, who laughs at life as he raises his sons, the six or so of them who are all named George.
© 2001 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is © 2001 by Jim Hummel.
You can comment on this column or contact Stan Isaacs with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
| Home | About Us | Archives | Talkback | Shopping Mall |