Ali: forebears but no heirs. . - In the Mix - movie review

The great b-baller Charles Barkley once told the world that he wasn't a role model, so stop asking him to be one.

Fair enough. However, Barkley, who grew up in Alabama, made his declaration in the early '90s, when black folks could eat in any restaurant, live in the suburbs, and star on Southeastern Conference basketball teams such as Auburn, his alma mater.

Barkley could afford not to be a role model. However, could Muhammad Ali?

Michael Mann's film Ali explores the complexities of life in a Lagrangian point, with forces pulling him between champion boxer and cultural icon. Yes, Ali had a choice to be a talented boxer with a big mouth and nothing to say, but sometimes you are compelled--drafted, if you will--to move beyond the easy expectations.

Forget what critics have said: Ali is one of the best films in a year of disappointing work. Biopics are difficult to pull off, especially when the subject is alive and well remembered. The film--which follows Ali from the 1964 fight with Sonny Liston to the 1974 "Rumble in the Jungle" with George Foreman--features brutal fight scenes, tense dialogue, good politics, and plenty of uncomfortable moments.

Will Smith stars as Ali, and proves once again, as was the case in Six Degrees of Separation, that he is an actor with depth. Smith delivers both physically and spiritually in transforming himself from Fresh Prince to the Greatest of All Time. And Smith takes on Ali's arrogance and tenderness in a way that draws more compassion out of a viewer than ambivalence. If you don't like Ali, the film will not lead to a change of heart.

But the greatest challenge in offering Ali to the audience is correctly placing his cultural significance in the turbulent years between 1964 and 1974. The movie does this quite well.

Let's face it, the elite in this country were not ready for a loud, sometimes obnoxious black male delivering crushing blows to the body politic. Sure, it's not as though Malcolm X or Stokely Carmichael weren't making enough noise with pro-black, anti-government rhetoric. But, whether we like it or not, athletic heroes have far more cultural power than they often want to assume. And for black fighters, their prowess in the ring has generally been seen as a threat.

Check out the 1910 fight between Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries, the Great White Hope. The story begins in late December of 1908, as Johnson crushes Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia, to win the world heavyweight title. Burns had earlier claimed that black fighters had neither the heart nor the skill to be world champions. Burns had gone as far as calling Johnson "yellow." Johnson taunted Burns as soon as the opening bell, telling Burns, "You're white, Tommy--white as the flag of surrender." Remember, this is 1908, and trash-talking a white man was as brazen an act as you could imagine.

Jack London was at that fight. London conceded that Johnson had thoroughly beaten Burns, likening the scene to a man cuffing a child. But he also penned a commentary for The New York Herald: "Jeffries must emerge from his alfalfa farm and remove the golden smile from Jack Johnson's face. Jeff, it's up to you!"

Jeffries, a former world champion who refused to fight black fighters while he held the title, came out of retirement to fight Johnson on July 4, 1910, in Reno, Nevada. What was at stake was clear. White writers hyped Jeffries as the man who would reclaim racial superiority in the ring. Black writers claimed this fight was a defining moment for a race.

Johnson, in the fifteenth round, puts Jeffries down with a stunning left to the face. Johnson is now the undisputed champion, and all hell breaks loose across America. On July 6, the London Daily Express reports in a headline: "Race Riots in America. 19 Deaths. Many Hurt, and 5,000 Arrested."

The story was even more astounding because of its blame-the-victim overtone. "Racial riots swept the United States last night from the Atlantic to the Pacific after Jeffries's crushing defeat by Johnson.... Most of the casualties were Negroes who were hunted down by white mobs, mostly because of boasts by the blacks that they had demonstrated their superiority over the whites." Several city councils outlawed showing the film of the fight; Congress passed a law banning the distribution of the film across state lines for commercial purposes.

Johnson, who was considered an "uppity nigger" for, among other things, speaking fluent French, wearing nice clothing, driving big cars, and dating and marrying white women, would be hounded with trumped-up charges of prostitution and transporting women across state lines for immoral acts. Booker T. Washington, through his secretary, eviscerated Johnson in a statement he was asked to give about the charges leveled against the champion in 1912. "This is another illustration of the more irreparable injury that a wrong action on the part of a single individual may do to a whole race," Washington wrote.

Johnson was sentenced to a year and a day in prison in the summer of 1913. He escaped to Canada, then sailed to Europe.