Rapid Response: Ali

Ali_movie_posterI learned a lot about Muhammad Ali in the wake of his death a few weeks back. His fighting record was stellar, and there are so many wonderful photos of Ali with other geniuses who all saw him as The Greatest, but he’s the most important sportsman of all time because he changed the game and changed the world.

I perhaps learned less so watching Michael Mann’s “Ali,” a frustratingly long and meandering biopic with only some strong performances and fight cinematography to back it up.

Most biopics of this pedigree would feel the need to start in Ali’s childhood and work its way up through his late in life Parkinson’s. Mann resists that urge and focuses strictly on his time as a fighter, both in the ring and as a warrior for civil rights, his religion and the war. And yet you could make a movie that dialed closely on any one of these moments. If Malcolm X can get his own film then so can his relationship with Ali. You could make an entire Frost v. Nixon style movie based solely around Ali’s interviews with Howard Cosell. The discrepancy between their on-camera squabbles and off-camera chemistry could make a great comedy.

But by the time “Ali” arrives in Africa for the fight with George Foreman, not to mention the late-to-the-party introduction of yet another one of his wives, the compelling conflict and intricate drama of Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement feels so far in the rearview mirror. We know the outcome of the fight, and the original tension the movie spent the first hour plus establishing has vanished.

So much of “Ali” hangs on Will Smith’s charisma in the role. It’s all in the mannerisms, the footwork, the bobbing and weaving, the physicality of his performance. When he’s being interviewed you can see his dramatic shift in posture, with his legs spread wide and a new cadence and rhythm to his voice. In the more dramatic scenes its his ability to get lost in a deep stare under heavy eyebrows and a gigantic forehead. Smith just fits the part better than anyone else could, and it’s arguably his best performance.

“Ali” wouldn’t be the first biopic to have a stellar lead performance and little else going for it. I said as much about “Chaplin” just this past week. But it’s amazing how in the film’s first hour, it genuinely floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee, streamlining Ali’s life moments, his energy and his legacy all around those pivotal fights. It’s just by the end it’s moving so slowly it hardly resembles a champion.

Rapid Response: Deliverance

 

“Deliverance” is the sort of chilling thriller that would today resonate with action fans, torture porn enthusiasts and even critics and liberals. It’s light on story but heavy on atmospheric tension, and some of its themes of inbred psychopaths using nature to battle invading city slickers would be mighty relevant in today’s film landscape.

Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight were already stars when this movie was released in 1972, and they’re rightfully bad ass in their roles. The image of a very young Reynolds is just awesome: ripped biceps, leather vest with no shirt, dark chest hair and of all things a bow and arrow. He encourages his three friends to canoe down a river set to become a lake, only to be harassed by sadistic, rapist hillbillies.

Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox on the other hand, were not stars. Beatty had his acting debut in ‘Deliverance,” and for him to be raped so gruesomely in such an intensely cinematic moment is a stark debut.

So much of the film is shockingly and carefully paced and photographed by John Boorman. From the opening shots we get a sense of some oddly unsettling natural landscapes. The famous dueling banjos scene sounds peaceful, but the disturbing framing is anything but. The camera loves to frame all four characters in the shot at once, and we get a sense of how this unified party will quickly be at odds with one another. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Deliverance”