Ali (2001)

In Ali, Michael Mann's dazzling, flawed, achingly ambitious biographical epic, Will Smith undergoes the kind of astonishing self-transformation that makes you blink, then stare. The movie presents the emergence of Cassius Clay, and his transformation into Muhammad Ali, as a totemic shift in American life -- the full infusion (and threat) of black virtuosity and pride into the national bloodstream. The first hour is superb, but Ali's descent from the role of champion creates a dramatic quandary that Mann never quite figures his way out of. No longer able to glory in Ali's triumphs, we need to get inside his soul, but his hunger for life remains mostly offscreen, as does his relationship with the cultish, bullying leadership of the Nation of Islam.

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