Muhammad Ali: Made in Miami begins just as eighteen-year-old Cassius Clay has captured the Gold Medal at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy. His amateur career over, Clay arrived in the Overtown district of Miami (then considered Harlem South), to begin working with trainer Angelo Dundee at the Fifth Street Gym on Miami Beach. Though Clay had won the Gold Medal as a light-heavyweight, Dundee and fight doctor Ferdie Pacheco would set out to mold Clay into a fierce competitor for the heavyweight title. Using vintage interviews and footage of the very young boxer, it’s fascinating to see the man who would become Muhammad Ali–talented, but not completely sure of himself, still developing the personality that would become recognizable throughout the world.
The film includes footage of Clay in the ring, his hands dangerously low but able to avoid counter-blows. Just watching this, it’s not hard to imagine how frustrating Clay’s unique style must have been for his opponents. They had to be thinking: How can this guy keep his hands so darn low and still avoid most of the stuff I’m throwing at him? Of course, Clay did this by leaning away from punches and using his lightning fast speed with his feet and hands to keep his opponents off balance.
The centerpiece of Muhammad Ali: Made in Miami is the fight that would turn the man then known as Cassius Clay into a legend. On February 5, 1964 Clay stepped into the ring with the seemingly invincible Sonny Liston as an 8 to 1 underdog. In one of boxing’s greatest upsets, Clay won the fight after Liston didn’t come out for the seventh round. Shortly after that fight, Cassius Clay officially became known as Muhammad Ali.
Though the Clay-Liston fight acts as a centerpiece for this documentary, it isn’t a montage of fight clips. Made in Miami digs deeper to try and give viewers an understanding of the deep racial and religious tensions that Clay/Ali was deal with during his rise to the top of the box world. The civil rights movement was in full swing, with people on both sides holding very passionate views; at the time The Nation of Islam was portrayed as a “hate group” by most of the media, so the boxer was under attack for his association with Malcolm X.
Interviews with Angelo Dundee, Ferdie Pacheco, Ali biographer Thomas Hauser, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Remnick and Columbia University historian Manning Marable and sportswriters and photographers who covered Clay in the early years of his career help to provide a riveting portrait of the boxing legend.
Muhammad Ali: Made in Miami’s 1.78:1 aspect ratio is rendered here with anamorphic enhancement. Some of the vintage interview clips, however, have not been handled properly and appear stretched and unnatural instead of being pillar boxed within the widescreen frame. As with all vintage footage, it is what it is, and still adds great flavor to the documentary. The audio is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0.
The only special feature is an interview with producers Gaspar Gonzalez and Alan Tomlinson (29 minutes) discussing the evolution of the documentary from a magazine article written by Gonzalez.
