Le plus grand

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"

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.

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 loved Ali the fighter. I was his biggest fan. With that said, Muhammad wasn't very good in this film; playing himself! The only good thing about this movie are the real films of some of Ali's greatest boxing matches. The entire cast comes across as cartoonish, stereotyped, wooden and dull. Even Ali overplays himself and plays himself very badly. Forget this film and watch Ali's real boxing matches on dvd instead.

"The Greatest" is a most unusual biopic in that the subject, Muhammad Ali, actually plays himself in most of the movie. Now, at the beginning, when Cassius Clay wins the Olympic gold, he's played by a different actor. But then it switches in the early 1960s and Ali plays himself. Considering his bigger than life persona, it's not at all surprising he played himself in the picture.

As I mentioned above, the film follows Clay (later, Muhammad Ali) from his Olympic gold to his career at his peak in the 1970s. As a result, you learn little about his early life and don't get to see the sad decline late in his career...which is probably for the best.

So is the film any good? Well, Ali is very good playing himself...and he turns out to be quite a decent actor. The film is not perfect, as sometimes it glosses over Ali's weakness (the many women in his life...both wives and mistresses)...but it does hit important things such as his conversion to Islam, his refusal to fight in Vietnam and his major boxing matches. In the latter case, they chose to show footage of the actual matches and fortunately they don't show too much...choosing instead to focus on his life outside the ring...which was a good choice.

So is it worth watching? Yes. It's definitely a film for anyone who wants to see Ali at his best and most famous period of his life.

By the way, it didn't harm the film much but having James Earl Jones playing Malcolm X was a mistake. While an amazing actor, he didn't look nor talk much like the man. It is interesting they chose Jones, however, at he played Alex Haley who was interviewing Malcolm X in "Roots: The Next Generation".