King of the World

Stupid me, saw this DVD in the bargain bin and thought I had got the Michael Mann/Will Smith film for 4.99 only to get home and find that, well, it wasn't.

Muhammad Ali is one of the greatest figures in modern history. Terence Howard looks nothing like Ali, sounds nothing like Ali, has none of Ali's charisma, does not have his physique, and makes a mockery of the fight scenes. When you pick someone to portray The Greatest, you need someone is all of these things or more otherwise the film is an insult to the Ali legend - and this film is.

It's not Howard's fault, noone could EVER portray Ali, but I feel he didn't even try. The guy who plays Sonny Liston evokes more audience sympathy than Ali, and that's just not on for an Ali film.

My house just got an extra coffee mug coaster.

Any film on Ali -- or Clay in this case -- is going to draw attention and be watched. This is not the best of them.

Covering the early days up to and including the Liston fight, this lacks the punch [pun intended] and impact of the greatest Ali film of all -- the documentary When We Were Kings.

As that features the real Ali rather than an actor, it's probably going to be a case that nothing will measure up.

I just didn't believe that the actor was Clay, and the film suffered accordingly. The portrayal of Malcolm X was pretty much Denzel Washington copied, and didn't offer anything.

One for the mad Ali fan I think.

I didn`t really hold out much hope for this TVM as I stuck it in the DVD player and after watching it my instincts had been proved right . Terrance Howard who bares absolutely no physical or vocal resemblance to Clay/Ali seems totally miscast . I can`t think of one single actor who`s given a convincing portrayal of Ali onscreen but I would say Howard`s is certainly the worst , but to be fair to him he`s not helped by the script . I`ve not read the source book this screenplay is based upon but I`ve a feeling the book may have taken liberties with a few facts . So it was a wrestling champion who made Ali believe in himself was it ? Yeah whatever . Of course it`s impossible to mention Ali without mentioning his conversion to Islam but it`s implied here that Cassius Clay wouldn`t have amounted to much if it wasn`t for Malcolm X . Well I don`t believe this for a moment , self belief is not something that can be conditioned into someone and few people in the 20th century have had as much self belief as Clay/Ali so give this biopic a miss

I guess this was rushed released in advance of the far superior Michael Mann biopic and deals with the early boxing days of Cassius Clay leading up to his title fight with Sonny Liston and its immediate aftermath.

The events were better portrayed in the film The Greatest, the biopic where Muhammad Ali played himself as the older Ali.

Terrence Howard does his best to play Clay but is hampered by a poor script and made for television direction. There are at times he shows flashes of Ali in his characterisation but it is few and far between.

The film is a letdown as you would think that it would be hard to mess up with the ingredients that Ali's life as provided but this is just dull.

I really enjoyed this movie. I initially thought it was going to cover Ali's entire life, and I was a little disappointed when I discovered that this was not the case. However, in retrospect, it's evident that a two-part series could not have done his entire life justice. King of the World provided the audience with an insight into the formative years of Ali's boxing career that the average person has probably not been privileged to. We actually see a transformation of a shy young man with a slight stuttering problem into a bold young man with an exceptional ability to handle the media and the audacity to call himself "The Greatest", and rightfully so.