Ali (R)

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Spanning the decade between Muhammad Ali's first bout with Sonny Liston and his one and only battle with George Foreman in 1974, director Michael Mann's high-priced biography of the boxing legend rarely reveals more than could be gleaned from the sports arena's upper deck--and sometimes less. But maybe that isn't so odd: As Mann's The Insider is ultimately a lament for how the (whole) truth of a controversial matter cannot be told by a modern media conglomerate whose commercial interests extend well beyond the ring, one suspects the filmmaker and Sony of having entered into an artistic brawl that found the underdog throwing in the towel somewhere near the fifth round, with Howard Cosell's discerning observation that the champ sure takes an awful lot of sugar in his coffee. At least credit the white Mann with the conscious decision to deny his own claim to insight and authority (if not enough for Spike Lee's taste): As an exercise in mass alienation--a $100 million biopic that concludes its exhaustively chronicled subject can't be known--this lightweight work of reenacted verité is intriguingly perverse. (Rob Nelson)

Review by Rob Nelson