Ali

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Ali is a bruiser, unwieldy in length and ambition. But Mann and Smith deliver this powerhouse with the urgency of a champ's left hook.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

It's one of the most ambitious biographical films ever made in this country, and one of the most unusual, moving and exciting.

Time Richard Schickel

A thoughtful epic is both a rarity and an oxymoron. But that's what Ali is, and you can't help being drawn sympathetically into its hero's struggle for mastery of himself and his era.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Ali boasts a whole tribe of outstanding secondary performances, of which Jon Voight's Cosell, in an outrageous rug and several tons of pasty-face makeup, is easily the funniest.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Ali becomes less the story of a boxer than the story of one man hanging onto his soul. With so many wrong ways to dramatize that process, Mann's approach seems all the more right.

The New Yorker David Denby

Michael Mann is a fluent, evocative filmmaker, and the movie is well written, expertly staged, and beautifully edited. [24 & 31 Dec 2001, p. 126]

The New York Times A.O. Scott

We see the movie levitate when Ali and Brown chant, "Float like a butterfly," the slogan that takes on a different meaning in each context, starting off as hopeful and spry, finally becoming rueful and pointed. When the film pulls off moments like these, it's breathtaking -- a near great movie.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Ali, in short, is far from a seamless success, but it does get the big things right and it respects a subject who commands respect.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

It's not Smith's fault that the movie can't quite pry apart the man from the myth from the metaphor. The three may well be inseparable by now and, at this point in his history and ours, that's surely the way we prefer it.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Could there possibly be a worse time for a movie celebrating a draft-evader who embraces Islam? You wouldn't think so.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

What keeps the movie from championship status is a sense that the filmmakers see Ali's social and political contributions as extra added attractions, ultimately less important than his greatness in the ring.

San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham

Connects so often and so persuasively that its shortcomings -- the movie goes slack from time to time -- really don't amount to much.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Overlong, entertaining, sense-assaulting drama.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

For everything it gets right, Ali, following its superb first hour, begins to lose the vision, clarity, and structure necessary to bring its hero into full focus.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Manages to entertain, even though it stays on the surface. It fails to deliver the hoped-for knockout, but also avoids the pitfall of an early-round collapse. While not attaining the greatness of its subject, it rises to a level somewhere above mediocrity.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

While Smith gets into Ali's head and under his skin, the movie around him has more footwork than punch.

Newsweek David Ansen

I respect it enormously, but it feels like an art film in search of a movie.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Just about everything Mann has chosen to present is valid, substantial and convincing, but by the end, the feeling persists that while certain essences have been grasped, only part of the story has been told.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Filled with vivid cameos and set to an infectious soul beat that effectively covers the underlying hum of calculated precision.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Whatever the reason, the energy and hold-onto-your-seat excitement that Muhammad Ali brought to the sports world is oddly absent from this quite accomplished but finally distant film.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

For all Smith's dedication and Mann's abilities, Ali remains a figure too big for even the big screen to contain.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Mann's film is beautiful to watch. Cinematogrpaher Emmanuel Lubezki employs a washed-out, harshly lit style that makes everything look vaguely menacing and hyper-real, which is complemented by Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bourke's Africanized score.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

Perhaps no movie could do Muhammad Ali justice. But this overlong but sketchy biopic by Michael Mann, in which style repeatedly tramples substance, actually does the great man a disservice.

USA Today Mike Clark

Ali is no disgrace, but it's not much of a performer, especially considering that it is one of the few hyped year-end releases that coulda been a contender.

New Times (L.A.) Bill Gallo

Muhammad Ali's spirit, his life force, is not quite present here, despite Smith's astonishing mimicry and Mann's considerable perspiration.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

What's lacking here is a sustained thematic focus -- at least five people worked on the script, including Mann, which may account for the absence of a clear through line -- though the spectacle and characters keep one absorbed.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

For a movie, Michael Mann's Ali is great radio. It's almost better to squint, so that you see the film in soft focus, just fury and motion and blurred faces; meanwhile, with your ears cranked open wide, everybody sounds much more like they should than looks like they should.

TV Guide Ken Fox

It's a brilliant impersonation; Smith gets Ali's speech patterns and Louisville accent exactly right, and astonishingly convincing facial prosthetics complete the transformation. But he never quite finds the man under the enormous image; those quintessential Mann moments, during which Ali is left alone to brood, feel surprisingly blank.

Film Threat Michael Dequina

Well-acted and skillfully made, the film offers enough that is worth seeing, but its idiosyncratic nature is sure to limit its mainstream appeal.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Watching Ali, you can be sure of experiencing two opposing things: a sterling performance from Will Smith as Muhammad Ali and a bewilderingly punch-drunk movie from Michael Mann.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Ultimately, Ali is a far more complex creature than this movie allows for.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A long, flat, curiously muted film about the heavyweight champion. It lacks much of the flash, fire and humor of Muhammad Ali and is shot more in the tone of a eulogy than a celebration. There is little joy here.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Ali nails its subject's anger and courage, but not his lilt; his swaggering boasts but not his sly self-irony; his power but not his grace; and his inner turmoil but not the outward joyousness that has made us come to love him.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

It was against all odds that Michael Mann ("The Insider") would make a boring movie focusing on the most eventful decade in the life of the most dynamic athlete in history. But that's what he has achieved with Ali.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

We’ve seen Ali as the charismatic star of the real-time drama of his life. Ali, for all its flashy filmmaking, just doesn’t compare.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Will Smith flies like a butterfly, but what director Michael Mann does to the greatest fighter of all time just stings.