Michael Mann's bio-pic of Muhammad Ali lunges for an ultra-inoffensive, middlebrow-liberal approach to its subject and keeps at it for two and a half hours. To judge from the film, Ali was used by the Nation of Islam but stood up for himself and was always his own man, sort of. He felt sad when Malcolm X got killed. He was kind of against the war in Vietnam and took a stand on that, as a result of which his career suffered for a while. And he liked women, but not so much that any noses got bent.

Like William Klein's documentary Muhammad Ali: The Greatest, the film starts in 1964 with Ali winning the world championship from Sonny Liston and ends with the 1974 match in Zaire where he reclaimed the title from George Foreman. The narrative is so loose it hardly exists, and the fight scenes are almost afterthoughts. Mann is more interested in creating a period effect with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's desaturated colors and overexposed backgrounds. Most of the movie looks as if it had been shot through a windshield. But Will Smith is a credible Ali, and Jon Voight, of all people, does an accurate Howard Cosell impression. Opens Christmas Day at the Entertainment, Flagship, Hoyts Providence 16, and Showcase Cinemas.