Ali

Michael Mann narrows the frame on purpose: not the whole of Muhammad Ali’s life, but the ten years from 1964 to 1974. Gregory Allen Howard’s first draft, titled Power and Grace, followed Ali from 12 to 40 and put his relationship with his father at the centre. Columbia weighed Spike Lee against Mann for the job, and Will Smith preferred Mann. Michael Bentt, who plays Sonny Liston, is a real boxer: he took the WBO heavyweight belt from Tommy Morrison in 1993. Smith says the punch Bentt landed while they shot that bout was the hardest he has ever been hit on a film set. It lost money: $87.7 million worldwide against a budget above $100 million. At the 74th Academy Awards it took two nominations and lost both, Smith to Denzel Washington for best actor and Jon Voight, playing Howard Cosell, to Jim Broadbent in the supporting category. In 2016, after Ali died, Mann cut the film a third time, dropping one fight and adding political material; that version appeared in 2017 as the Commemorative Edition. A good fit if you want Liston played by an actual heavyweight champion and do not mind Mann lingering on the nightclub sequences. Not for anyone waiting for Ali’s childhood or his Parkinson’s years; the narrative stays inside that decade.