“The Greatest” series about Muhammad Ali: legend without pathos

When Muhammad Ali defeated the reigning heavyweight world champion, Sonny Liston, as an underdog on February 25, 1964, he stood in the boxing ring and shouted into the reporters' microphones "I am the greatest!" This legendary reputation of the boastful young man, who like no other boxer insulted his opponents before the fight, became the title of his autobiography, published in 1975, and a documentary film (1977).

Now Amazon Prime is coming up with an eight-part biopic of the most famous boxer of all time, also called “The Greatest”. Another film adaptation of Muhammad Ali's life after Will Smith, among others, embodied the boxing legend in the cinema 25 years ago?

But the new series only focuses on the youth of the man from Louisville, Kentucky, who was then called Cassius Clay. Only at the end of the series, which tells four years of his biography, from winning the Olympic gold medal in Rome to the aforementioned first victory in the professional heavyweight division, does the then 22-year-old Cassius Clay (Jaalen Best) declare that he is giving up his slave name and is now called Muhammad Ali.

“The Greatest” deals with the myth of the boxing legend in small parts and tries to avoid great pathos, which of course doesn't always work. Cassius Clay, as he is called throughout the series, is above all a family man and closely involved in his community fighting for civil rights.

Despite his sporting success, he constantly experiences racist exclusion. That's why the scene is crucial when, in 1960, as a newly crowned Olympic champion in his hometown with the gold medal around his neck, he is not served in a diner because he is black, runs down the streets in a rage and then throws his medal into the river.

“The Greatest” tells a lot about the different tensions at the beginning of his boxing career. Above all, the association and management want to get money out of him, the lower-middle-class, strict and Christian parents urge restraint and his younger brother, who eventually takes him to the Nation of Islam, is always at his side.

The well-connected mother insists on hiring a civil rights attorney when her son is about to sign a contract. Cassius Clay aka Muhammad Ali is portrayed in “The Greatest” as a representative of his black community who struggles to reconcile sporting success and loyalty to community and family. This balancing act is in the foreground.

The series deliberately avoids long boxing scenes or the detailed dramaturgy of individual fights, as is usually the case in boxer films. A shaky hand-held camera and quick cuts make the mostly short fight scenes in the ring incredibly fast-paced. Only the final fight against Sonny Liston, who is also the main protagonist of the series, is told in more detail.

Of course, Malcolm X, with whom Clay became friends during those years, also appears. In the end, Clay's career is almost over before it really begins because of his involvement in the Nation of Islam. It remains to be seen whether the series will focus on just four years of the boxing icon's youth in order to leave material for a possible sequel.