BY DANIEL BAIG | Have Michael Mann and Oliver Stone ever actually been photographed together? Ive been wondering about that since about halfway through seeing Manns new film Ali. More on that presently.

For the first ten minutes or so of Ali I was well more than impressed. I was thinking to myself that Id have to be readjusting my best-of-the-year list, because what I was watching right now was pretty wonderful. Ali opens with a black screen; we hear a murmuring crowd and an announcer giving a long, glowing intro for someone; of course, I was expecting him to end with, "Ladies and gentlemen, Muhammad Ali!!" (or "Cassius Clay!!") But instead, of all things, its Sam Cooke whose name we hear, and then were watching an actor playing the great soul singer launch into a high-energy routine in a small, crowded, all-black nightclub. Right away I was admiring Michael Mann for confounding my expectations. I think its great when a movie tricks the audience. But at the same time I was wondering where he was going with this.

Where in the end I think he was going with it was mostly just setting his story in a specific place and time. If he also meant to draw parallels between Ali and Cooke, I didnt get them. In any case, the concert begins to be intercut with scenes of Will Smith as the young boxer, still with initials C.C., running alone in sweats down a cold, deserted nighttime street. A police squad car appears and slowly drives alongside him; the cop at the wheel calls out, not quite seriously, but still in a voice of complacent authority, "Hey, what are you running from, son?" The future champ doesnt even acknowledge them, but just keeps right on running forcefully, purposefully. He has places to go, places far away from here. Eventually the cops shrug and drive off. This scene is a brilliant encapsulation of what will be Alis overriding theme  the man who the world would come to know as Muhammad Ali was driven, from the get-go, eyes always focused on the prize. Authority figures  white authority figures  were unnerved by him, and tried to stop him or slow him down, but as best he could, he ignored them and kept on going.

Then we see a montage of Ali training: sparring, jumping rope, etc. Hes being trained by Ron Silver. There are also brief flashbacks  Cassius as a little boy, watching his father paint a blond, blue-eyed Jesus for a church wall, and then Cassius the young man standing in the doorway of a Black Muslim service, listening to a dynamic speaker named Malcolm X contrast the Nation of Islams message with that of "others," unnamed but clearly Martin Luther King and his followers. "We obey the law, but we dont beg to sit at the white mans lunch counter." At the end of his speech, the young preacher focuses his gaze on the young athlete in the door. Later we see them talking.

This is all brilliant. Weve seen where Ali came from, and how it influenced where and what hes doing now. Its shorthand to be sure, and perhaps overly simplistic, but thats one of the necessities of telling a story through cinema.

What were watching is dynamic; its constant movement, exciting editing, and the great overlay of the electrifying performance of Cooke.

Back in the gym. Off in the background, a rather odd-looking guy (Jamie Foxx) watches the young fighter.

And then, finally, an actual conversation. Cassius is lying relaxing in the sun in a lawn chair (in his backyard?). That strange guy from before appears from around the corner of the house, and weve switched to the fighters perspective; for the rest of this brief scene were looking through his eyes, up at this visitor whos approaching, already speaking. And the way hes approaching and addressing us, slightly hunched over, the sun shining behind him so hes dark surrounded by light, talking like one of the saved giving testimony, makes him seem almost like a half-crazed shaman, a witch doctor, part mumbling homeless person and part country preacher. And indeed, the things hes saying are like religious prophecy; hes saying that if we take him on board, hell inspire us to become the greatest champion ever; with him on our side, well go all the way to the top.

The scene ends without us hearing a response, but what the answer must have been is soon made apparent, as Bundini (the name of this "designated giver of inspiration") is now omnipresent along with the rest of Clays camp.

And then were in Miami Beach, the gang in a car, trainer Dundee (Silver) looking nervous, Cassius in suit and tie looking extremely confident. Great music is still playing on the soundtrack. Nobodys talking. And its at this point I thought to myself that this has all been amazing so far, but are we ever going to get to hear Clay/Ali speak?

Well, of course we do. But in hindsight, here was the first indication of what one of Alis biggest problems is. We dont hear Ali speak enough. When we do hear him speak, its mostly in public appearances, in the flamboyant verbal performances he was famous for, whether it was mercilessly taunting and insulting opponents at weigh-ins and press conferences, or teasing Howard Cosell on Wide World of Sports. Will Smith excels in these scenes, perfectly capturing the joyous braggadocio; he, like the real Ali did, makes narcissistic grandstanding fun to watch. The scenes of him bantering with Cosell, played by Jon Voight, are especially enjoyable.

Outside of public speech, most of the rest of the time Ali talks in this movie is either early on with Malcolm X, or with the three women he would marry in succession (the fourth and final marriage happened after the events depicted in the film). And these latter conversations can basically be grouped into two patterns: either hes trying to get into their pants, or later, after hes married them, criticizing the way they dress. Now its true that we see quite a bit of wife number two  a very, very strong performance by Nona Gaye (Marvin Gayes daughter)  criticizing him for ignoring the way hes being taken advantage of by the Nation of Islam, but in these scenes its she whos doing the talking.

(While on the topic of Alis women, I should also mention that Smiths real life wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, playing the champs first spouse, is also great, and incredibly sexy.)

There are a few exceptions, of course. Theres a good scene early on where Ali tries to defend his decision to change his name to his father, Cassius Clay, Sr., played heartbreakingly by Giancarlo Esposito, who not surprisingly doesnt take it very well.

But for the most part were not given a picture of Ali the private person, other than his poor record with women. At best one could say that this has the effect of rendering him a cipher, a sphinx, a mystery. But you could also say it does something worse than that.

And that is to make him seem  well, first let me describe what are probably the two longest private conversations he has in the movie not with one of his wives. Theyre both with Malcolm X. In the first, Malcolm comes by Alis motel room late one night (Malcolm had been part of his camp for awhile) to invite him to come to Africa with him when he goes there to lecture. Muhammad, however, is much more interested in what hes been watching on TV, a documentary about the destructive power of termites. (His fascination with it got a lot of laughs; some people might perhaps have remembered that in the latter stages of his career the champ did TV commercials for termite killer.) He repeats facts from the show back to Malcolm, and can barely pull his eyes away from the screen. In other words, he acts just like a young child.

Later, the two friends run into each other purely by chance in Africa  theyve gone there separately, as Malcolm has been declared persona non grata by the Nation of Islam, and Muhammad has stayed with them. At first Ali is excited to see his old pal. But then, as Malcolm is excitedly telling him about the amazing experience of seeing people of all races praying together at Mecca, Mann does something that hell do a few times in the movie. He has Ali form a sentence in his mind before he speaks it; we hear him thinking it, and then much later he says it. It makes it seem as if hes mentally slow, having to rehearse words very slowly well in advance of saying them. And what he says in this scene, a line his inner repetition of, combined with the slow, mechanical way he actually says it out loud making it seem like hes been programmed, doesnt come across as an original thought at all, but rather something brainwashed into him: "You shouldnt have disrespected the honorable Elijah Muhammad [the Nation of Islam founder and leader]."

In other words, Ali comes across in Ali as, if not quite stupid, then most definitely not much of a deep thinker.

Did Mann and his co-screenwriters Stephen J. Rivele, Christopher Wilkinson, and Eric Roth mean to make Muhammad Ali seem like a mental dullard? I seriously doubt it; the movie is too obviously in love with its subject. What I think may have handicapped them, fatally, is the fact that Ali is still alive. They must have been afraid to ascribe to him any thoughts that he might not really have had. So they pretty much stick to the public record.

The result is that the audience is mostly on the outside, observing Ali, but not getting inside him. Its like watching a documentary which never actually interviews its subject. Ali is for the most part reduced by Ali to his (loud) mouth, his fists, and his penis.

The one time we really get to see Smith/Ali genuinely show emotion, with no other witnesses but us, is when he hears the news that Malcolm X has been killed. He pulls his car over to the side of the road, and breaks down.

Contrast that, however, with Martin Luther Kings death. The night of that event, we see Ali stand on a rooftop looking out over the city below and away. Shot in digital video, it will probably only be clear to those with knowledge of what happened in cities after MLKs assassination  large-scale riots, fires  what he sees in this scene, because its murky. (There is smoke rising from different spots on the horizon, but if you didnt already know about the fires, you might think it was smoke from factories, or even steam.) And thats all we get. No expression on his face. And King is never mentioned again. What did Muhammad think about him, and his murder? Did he think anything? We wont find out from this movie.

Two elements mentioned in the above paragraph bring me back to the opening of my review, when I implied Ali made me think Oliver Stone and Michael Mann might be one and the same person. First, the use of digital video. Ali, like some of Stones recent works, is shot on all sorts of different film stock, including at times drab, life-sappingly poorly lit digital video. Hey kids, all of a sudden were in a Lars von Trier movie!

This is annoying because its distracting. Instead of fully concentrating on the scene, Im wondering, "Why did he choose to shoot this particular scene in video? Hmm . . ."

And then theres the King assassination. Mann manages to work it in to his Ali story, though as I hinted above, its not clear why, except to remind us again the times were troubled. He doesnt just reference it, either; he actually depicts it. How does he justify this? According to the movie (and if this is really true, I apologize, though I did a fair amount of searching and could find it mentioned nowhere), by an amazing coincidence Mohammad Alis lawyer just happened to have the "good luck" to call his client from a payphone at the motel in Memphis where King was shot, at the exact same time. This enables Mann to reenact the famous photograph of Kings aides standing around his lifeless body on the motel balcony, pointing in the direction they heard the shots come from. If it wasnt such horrifying image, this recreation of it would provoke giggles; its silly, like one of those "Old Masters Come To Life!" shows where people pose like the subjects of famous paintings. And then, even with the contrivance of having the attorney there, no character in the movie could have seen this moment, because when the shots began the lawyer ran away! So just whose point of view is this supposed to be? Nobodys; its just another TIME/LIFE moment in Ali; ("Buy now, and well also throw in Sam Cookes Greatest Hits on 2 CDs!")

Because not only does Mann recreate the King murder for us, he also gives us a full sequence depicting Malcom Xs assassination in the Audubon Ballroom in New York. Another thought which occurred to me while watching was that Spike Lee is going to be mighty pissed off when he sees Ali, because for a good 20 minutes or so the movie pretty much becomes The Malcolm X Story. We get scenes about Malcolm that have absolutely nothing to do with Ali. Instead, they show how the U.S. government spied on Malcolm when he went to Africa, surreptitiously listening in on his phone conversations. We get the aforementioned assassination scene. And in between, Oliver Stone-like, we get a conspiracy; according to the movie, Malcolm X may have been assassinated by Nation of Islam members, but they were acting at the behest of the U.S. government. At one point I leaned over to my companion to whisper, "Are we in the right theater? I thought this was supposed to be Ali, but it seems like weve walked into Malcolm X."

Other ways in which Ali resembles an Oliver Stone movie: as in, say, JFK, or Any Given Sunday, every single supporting character seems to be played by a recognizable name. But this is often needlessly distracting, not to mention needlessly more expensive for the filmmakers than needs be. Example: "Hey, isnt that Paul Rodriguez playing the doctor? Boy hes put on weight!" But the mystifying thing is that I swear Rodriguez doesnt have a single line in the whole movie. Hes in a lot of scenes, but hes just a presence. What special quality did he bring to the role to justify his being cast instead of an unknown?

Most egregious example of same: Martin Luther King, the character, is glimpsed for all of about two seconds, literally, in Ali, and thats on a small TV set in the background of one scene. The moment is his famous handshake meeting with Malcolm X, and since Malcolm X as a recurring character in the film is of course played by an actor (Mario Van Peebles, and hes excellent, by the way. He truly surprised me. He also looks a lot more like the real Malcolm than Denzel), the actual film couldnt be used. (Although Im sure they could have done a Forrest Gump kind of thing and merged the two.) So they need an actor to play King. "Why, thats LeVar Burton! He doesnt look anything like Martin Luther King! It looks like he did put on a little weight for the part, though. I wonder what hes been doing since the last Star Trek movie?" And once again were taken out of the movie. And thats the entire time LeVars talents are utilized, unless its actually him playing Kings lifeless, crumpled body on the balcony. Whats the point? An unknown could have done it, and surely for a lot less money.

Like Stone has done with both JFK and Natural Born Killers (and as Kevin Costner did with Dances With Wolves . . .), Michael Mann will, I predict, sometime in the not too distant future come out with a "Directors Cut" of Ali, which will be both longer and more coherent (and thus probably also more satisfying).

As it stands now, Ali screams of being a movie where an absolute ton of footage was shot but not used. I know for one thing some of the stuff in the trailer is not in this version. Maybe there were actually scenes shot with LeVar Burton speaking as King. Maybe there were scenes which explained 

Well, theres a lot of stuff which could have used explaining, at least for someone like me who didnt go in knowing all that much about Muhammad Ali. Ali is an example of what happens sometimes when people finally get to make their dream project. They know so much about their subject, and get so deep into depicting it, that they forget what "outsiders" can reasonably be expected to know.

Things like who a lot of the characters in the movie are. It took me quite some time to figure out, for example, that Giancarlo Esposito was Alis father (until the scene I mentioned earlier, actually). Before then I thought he was just another one of the unidentified hangers-on / members of the camp the movie is populated with.

Like, who was that friendly young white guy whos welcomed into Muhammads room right in time for him to hear Ali, on the phone, say those famous words, "I aint got no trouble with the Viet Cong"? They seem to know him, but I hadnt seen him before this scene.

Its not just characters that could use clarification. Important events happen offscreen, and the audience can be left going, "Huh?" later on. For example, while waiting in Zaire for a few weeks for opponent George Foremans accidental injury to heal so they can have their bout, Ali picks up a gorgeous girl. His wife has gone back to the States to take care of one of their sick children. Ali flirts with this beauty, walks around town with her for a while, and then they go back to (someones) place and have sex. A few scenes later, Ali enters a hotel room, not the one wed seen him and his wife in before. His wife is sitting there, and says something about finding out he had a room at the Hotel Intercontinental. Is that where this scene is taking place? Is this then the room of the other woman? Mrs. Ali tells her husband how its hurt her to hear about "all this." She asks him if he loves the other woman. He says he doesnt know. Whoah! Obviously some time has passed here. Obviously it wasnt just a one-night-stand. But we hadnt seen that woman again. Do we assume she and Ali have been going around in public like a couple? Im glad Mann and his writers and editors arent underestimating the audiences intelligence, but showing us something in between these two scenes would have been good.

The passing of time in general is unclear in this movie. Years go by, I found out later by reading up on Ali, when I thought only months had passed. When Ali is convicted of draft evasion for refusal to be inducted into the army, he finds hes unable to box, because all the state boxing commissions have banned him. (Three years later the Supreme Court will overturn the conviction.) We see that hes broke, and theres a scene of some guy who works for him saying he cant get him a fight anywhere in the country, because all the state boxing commissions have banned him. The situation becomes really desperate for him and his family financially. Then all of a sudden hes meeting with Joe Frazier, telling him they can fight in Georgia, where theres no state boxing commission. Well, thats good. Why did it take them three years to find this out?? Because thats how long passes in between his suspension and the Frazier fight (when he is still under suspension), although again I found that out only after the movie. There must be an explanation thats not, "Oh, we couldnt find the state of Georgias phone number! For three years."

The whole movie is like this, weirdly edited, seemingly impatient at times, with some things being given short shrift, thus leaving questions in the audiences mind, and then at other times being shamefully indulgent. Sometimes both in the same scene. When we first meet the woman who will become Alis wife, we join the two of them already slow-dancing on a crowded dancefloor. Is this his girlfriend? No, as the scene goes on it seems to indicate he just met her there. After more talk, which is hard to hear and pay attention to, as theres a dynamic girl soul group belting out a song on a stage just behind them, they leave the club. But we dont leave with them!! Instead, we stay. And stay. And stay. Until the singer finishes her number! Why?? We dont know who she is. Our main character has left! This is just a waste of time. Then we finally cut to Ali and the girl having sex. But its not entirely clear whether theyve just met or not.

This is an example of the inscrutable priorities which seem to have dictated Alis editing. Instead of more time with the extraneous singer, how about showing us Ali approaching this girl; how does he pick her up? Did she know who he was? They seem to be talking about Muslim things, though shes not Muslim. Were they set up? Where is this dance, anyway?

And to be honest, when I first saw them dancing, I thought it meant Ali was cheating on a wife, because in an earlier scene he was relaxing in a house playing familiarly with some children and talking with a woman, and I assumed they were his wife and kids, and that that was his home. Guess not. But I dont know whose wife and kids they were.

During the part of the movie set in Zaire, we get two scenes of that countrys dictator, Joseph Mobutu, in his palace. Ali is not in these scenes. Now, I think its admirable of the filmmakers to remind people of the monster who was running that country, and how he enjoyed the spotlight the "Rumble in the Jungle" brought him. But one of the scenes consists of Mobutu telling an aide to "invite the banker and the Frenchman" to dinner. The later scene is, indeed, him having dinner with some guests. The point of this second scene is clear; its to allow one of the guests (the Frenchman? the banker? who knows) to observe how pleased the President for Life must be at all the attention. Why was the first scene necessary? It was even shot in the same room, so it wasnt like the filmmakers wanted to show off a different "palace room" set.

The most interesting and inspirational parts of Ali are those that deal with the champs act of civil disobedience in refusing to fight in Vietnam. This cost him a great deal, and it almost cost him five years in jail as well. Yet the odd thing is, though we get to see figures of authority  the judge who sentenced him, the New York State Boxing Commission  condemning his "treason," we never see what the general public thought. (Especially the white general public.) That would have been really interesting. Did people yell insults at him in public? Throw things? Or tell him that they were behind him? The only scenes in the three year period which show him interacting with everyday people are set in his own neighborhood, where not surprisingly everyone likes and is friendly to him.

Finally, if youve read this far and still dont know if you want to see the movie or not, its probably because youre a boxing fan, and want to see some great fighting. Does Ali deliver on this score? Yes, it certainly does. The fight scenes are excellently choreographed and performed by Will and the real boxers who play Alis famous opponents. Theyre brutal, and bloody. The only time I didnt care for how they were filmed was when Mann had his camera get in so close to the fighters bodies that they cover it up, as if the camera has gone right in between them when theyre hanging on each other, or between them and the ropes. This is stupid, because nobody could ever have that viewpoint in a boxing match. Not the boxers, not the spectators, not the ref, not even a camera hung over the top of the ring. So whose "eyes" are we seeing these shots through? Nobodys but that of a camera which could never have been there.

If you really dont like boxing, you should definitely stay away from Ali, because theres a lot of boxing in it. Four fights are pretty much recreated in their entirety. And every blow can be heard on the soundtrack. By the end of the movie I had a headache. I felt like I had been punched once myself.

The soundtrack, by the way, is where one more egregiously distracting annoyance occurs, and reoccurs. Almost all the music in Ali is period music  Sam Cooke, etc. , as makes sense for a period film. However, at moments in the boxing sequences, we hear the unmistakable sounds of 2000/2001 era Moby! Over and over again. It really pulls you out of the movie, and it doesnt even suit the scenes.

Theres much to admire in Ali, especially the filmmaking skill brought to bear on the boxing scenes, and the uniformly great performances. Its just a shame thats its not a great movie, like it should have been. Its makers have made a movie for people who already know all about Muhammad Ali, but even there theyve wasted their time. As my friend, an Ali fan, told me, a great many number of scenes in Ali are actually note-perfect reenactments (a la Gus Van Sants Psycho) of actual documentary film footage of Ali which can be seen in the recent award-winning documentary When We Were Kings. So since Ali doesnt really give any insight into the man, why bother seeing Will Smith ape the real thing?

Grade: B-