Ali (2001)
Directed by Michael Mann
In 1964, a brash, new pro boxer, fresh from his Olympic gold medal victory, explodes onto the scene: Cassius Clay. Bold and outspoken, he cuts an entirely new image for African Americans in sport with his proud public self-confidence and his unapologetic belief that he is the greatest boxer of all time. Yet at the top of his game, both Ali's personal and professional lives face the ultimate test.
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What critics compared Ali to
It's a lot to deal with narratively and thematically, and the script by Steven Knight ("Locke," "Eastern Promises"), who rewrote the original draft by Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson (the pair have plenty of biopic experience under their belts with "Nixon" and "Ali") doesn't always get everything across clearly.
The first is Michael Mann's Ali (2001), featuring Will Smith as Muhammad Ali, the other Ron Howard's Cinderella Man (2005), starring Russell Crowe as the Depression-era fighter James Braddock.
Meanwhile, besting even Michael Mann’s Ali — which opened under the pleading, almost mournful strains of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home To Me,” for seven wordless minutes — Anderson’s movie opens with a 14-minute passage in which no dialogue is spoken.
Collateral marks Michael Mann's first film since the disappointing Ali, and returns him to the gritty streets of Los Angeles - the scene of his 1995 action masterpiece, Heat.
Along the way, he brought something extra to more prestigious genre films like Last of the Mohicans (1992), The Insider (1999) and Ali (2001).
Michael Mann's ("Ali"/"Heat"/"Collateral") Miami Vice is a slick action thriller that's style over substance, with the meaningless plot involving some kind of muddled series of multiple conspiracies with the likes of the Aryan brotherhood, some Haitian drug dealers and a Colombian drug lord working out of Paraguay with a Chinese Cuban businesswoman.
On the subject of expectations, fans of Michael Mann--and anybody interested in stylish, hard-bitten cinema should be a fan--may expect something on the ambitious level of "The Insider," "Heat" or "Ali."
His subsequent Ali (2001) was a biopic hurt by Mann's lionization of the controversial boxer, and Collateral (2004) was a ridiculously overrated thriller that somehow managed to get critics and audiences to ignore the fact that it was hopelessly contrived.
Ever since Heat, Mann’s films of the past decade — even a finely charted biopic like Ali — have been as much about the creation and sustenance of mood as anything else.
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It is an unspeakably beautiful film that, like Michael Mann's similarly grey and oddly detached Ali , can't seem to find itself in the middle of its dazzling cinematic expertise.