Ali (2001) Critic Reviews

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

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

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.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

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

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.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

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

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.Read the full review