Ali (2001) Critic Reviews

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review