Review of When We Were Kings (1996) by Lorenzo V — 30 Jun 2012

"Muhammad Ali, he was like a sleeping elephant. You can do whatever you want around a sleeping elephant; whatever you want. But when he wakes up, he tramples everything.".

A documentary of the 1974 heavyweight championship bout in Zaire between champion George Foreman and underdog challenger Muhammad Ali.

REVIEW.

The story of Muhammed Ali and the famous "Rumble in the Jungle" is the stuff of legend; the world's best boxer becomes a hate figure for middle America and is banned for political reasons; he returns but has lost his edge; he gets a last shot at the world title in a fight to be held in Zaire, whose kleptomaniac dictator is willing to put up his people's cash to pay for it; and against all the odds, he astonishingly beats the superior puncher George Foreman through a combination of wit and bravery. Ali was beautiful and clever as well as violent; his "art" destroyed him, but it's easy to tell his story as a kind of noble myth. Which is exactly what 'When We Were Kings', a documentary that relies relatively little on talking heads (because the whole drama was a kind of performance, and filmed) does. The film even gets its soundtrack for free thanks to the musicians brought in to publicise the fight. When We Were Kings shows a historic fight and the surroundings around it and you can't help but be thankful that such an important event was captured in such a great form.