The Greatest Is a Biographical Drama That Understands Why Muhammad Ali Became a Legend
Time · Judy Berman ·
Prime Video's chronicle of the young Cassius Clay's rise is conventional in form but revelatory in its insight
“What do you think it is about Cassius that makes him able to do things that other men find impossible?” Malcolm X (Michael Ealy) asks Muhammad Ali’s stalwart trainer, Angelo Dundee (Giovanni Ribisi), in Prime Video’s stylistically conventional yet unusually insightful The Greatest. “What spark inside him makes him so different from other people?”
These questions fuel the series, streaming in full on Nov. 4, which finds in the relative newcomer Jaalen Best an ideal young Cassius Clay, a bold boxing phenom on a quest to become the heavyweight champion of the world—and a spiritual journey that will change both his faith and his name. There are reasons to be skeptical of this show. It counts his widow, Lonnie Ali, among its executive producers. (Michael B. Jordan, who played the Ali-esque title character in the Creed movies, is another.) Such projects can default to hagiography. And Ali has already been portrayed many times on screen. But creator Ben Watkins (Cross) doesn’t dodge the tougher aspects of his subject’s life. What justifies this retelling is not only the care he and Best take in recounting what Ali achieved, but also conveying what made him capable of greatness.
The Greatest is bookended by career highlights: the 1960 Rome Olympics, where Ali won gold at 18, and his first heavyweight championship in 1964. That fight, against Sonny Liston, must be his most extensively documented moment. Michael Mann opened his 2001 biopic Ali, starring Will Smith, with an immersive restaging of the match. Regina King’s 2020 film One Night in Miami imagines its afterparty, a meeting of the minds between Eli Goree’s Ali, Malcolm X, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke. In ending where these predecessors begin, the series traces how the upstart Cassius Clay crafted Muhammad Ali, the legend.