Io sono il più grande

I have read some of the other reviews and their negative criticism of Ali's acting talents but the reality is Ali invented "hype" and "rapping" which both were reflected in this autobiographical film from his teenage years as the 1960 Boxing heavyweight Gold Medal winner through to his 1974 upset win of the heavy hitting George Foreman in Zaire, Africa.

Just like in all his incredible boxing matches this film packs a lot of punch in its.101 minutes of film run time. I wish people would look at what the film includes rather than what the film is lacking. Muhummad Ali was the greatest fighter and influential person of the 21st century. How can anyone say he is a bad actor when he is playing himself?

Despite having a rather poorly constructed story and not telling anything that fans of Muhamas Ali did not know; But it's even good, interesting, and fairly well built for a biography. Highly recommend.

Maybe the producers of this film thought it would be highly original to have Ali play himself. I can picture them sitting down and saying that really there is no actor who could do this man justice (this was before Will Smith was born!). However, Ali just couldn't act. Its sad watching him play himself as a young man when he's so obviously overwieght older and out of shape. Also I think that at the time this film was made, he was beginning to develop Parkinsons. His speech was already becoming slurry. The filmakers surround Ali with a professional cast of actors like James Earl Jones and Ernest Borgnine as Angelo Dundee, but Ali just wasn't right for this. Maybe this is one film that should never have been made. The lead up to the climatic Rumble in the Jungle with Foreman where he regains the title is done very well, it shows him training and running. They show quite a bit of footage from Ali's fights which is fine because they are from his best fights, the only thing is they keep playing the same damn music OVER AND OVER for them! It got kind of irritating. It was thrilling though in the end when Ali went up against the younger and stronger George Foreman and beat him in a stunning upset by using that "rope a dope" strategy. The final words of the film are of the fight commentator when he says "Foreman goes down, Muhammad Ali has done the IMPOSSIBLE! He has regained the Heavyweight Championship of the World"

After seeing several disappointing biopics featuring Ali I have no fear in saying this is one of the better movies featuring the great man . The film is helped by a script that tells of young Clay`s struggle against prejudice and discrimanation without going overboard , and the script to its credit doesn`t concern itself with deep discussions of Ali`s psyche unlike a few movies I could mention , here the script just concentrates itself with hard facts . By a strange irony the film is less effective when Ali appears playing himself but that`s probably down to Ali having a bit too much fun reliving his past like turning up at Sonny Liston`s house at the dead of night to throw insults , but you can`t really blame Ali for enjoying himself , he was a remarkable man who had many remarkable moments in his life

You probably won`t learn anything new about Ali watching this film , but you can be certain that it`s all true

I said several months ago that no one could play Ali except Ali. I was right. Muhammad Ali does a magnificent job playing himself in this movie. Maybe he's no actor, but in this case he accomplished what he set out to do, and he had several really effective scenes, such as when he explained why he didn't want to go to Vietnam, and the scene where Clay demanded that he no longer be called by that slave name.

This was the third film (as opposed to documentary) that I saw on the life of the great boxer. David Ramsey did an okay job in the first one, and Will Smith tried his best but didn't quite capture the champ as only the champ could. Smith may have been the best actor out of the three, and certainly his film was the best.

Chip McAllister made young Cassius Clay too much of a clown. He was okay, I guess, but the portrayal of the character improved dramatically at one point, and I also noticed the actor looked so much more like Clay. That's when I remembered: Ali himself was playing the character.

Ernest Borgnine did a capable job as Ali's trainer, but this was not one of his best performances. James Earl Jones did a fine job as Malcolm X, brief as the performance was.

I learned a few new details about Ali's life I didn't know before. I also found out that 'The Greatest Love of All' was written long before Whitney Houston made it a hit.

The main reason for watching this movie was Ali himself. He was the greatest.