Biopic of Muhammad Ali goes the distance with full life story and bouts against rivals like George Foreman It's hard to complain about more footage of the young Muhammad Ali, the Louisville Lip, mugging for the camera and cracking wise. Add in never-before-heard family recordings and fresh interviews with friends, colleagues, children and famous fans, and there's reason to muse upon Muhammad yet again in director Clare Lewins' film. The 2001 Will Smith biopic "Ali" compressed events for dramatic purposes. The Oscar-winning doc "When We Were Kings" focused mainly on Ali's 1974 "Rumble in the Jungle" against George Foreman. "I Am Ali" goes the full 12 rounds with his complete biography. The champ is a Kentuckian, Olympian, Muslim convert, conscientious objector against the Vietnam War and a victim of Parkinson's disease, which has destroyed his body but not his spirit. Among the interviewees: Ali's former coaches and his children. The champ himself appears only in archival footage. "Boxing was just something he did," Foreman says, referring to all the worlds encompassed in the life of the now-72-year-old Ali. Indeed.
