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Before the masses of Johnny Depp fans crowd the auditoriums this summer for the highly anticipated "Public Enemies," let us take the time to revisit an overlooked gem of Director Michael Mann: "Ali." As the next in a filmography of such 90s seminal masterpieces as "Heat" and "The Insider," "Ali" (2001) was set to start the new millennium with measures of unparalleled success. Even Steven Spielberg declared, before Mann shot a single frame of photography, that it would "be the greatest boxing movie ever made."

Well, it didn't score a Best Picture Oscar nomination (just acting nods for Will Smith & Jon Voight in his scene stealing Howard Cosell role) and it didn't exactly draw the massive crowds of other Smith vehicles like the wretched "I Am Legend." So what happened?

Three hours of dizzying editing (a mixture of long takes and awkward digital shots), scenes that did not seem to fit in the movie at times (the entire Malcolm X subplot for example) & a misjudging of desires on behalf of the movie going audience. For every two people, one was there to see the Fresh Prince of Bel Air do some boxing and the other was there to be emotionally enveloped in a cop-bad guy/journalist-whistle blower Mann-type sophisticated thriller. 

What "Ali" was and still is, is a grand love letter from an adoring champion of film to a champion of the most brute and physically dangerous sport practice: boxing. If Muhammad Ali can be seen as the stubborn practitioner of employing personal style into an otherwise preordained field of work, so too can Michael Mann. A big pusher of High Definition filmmaking, Mann in these last years has pissed off colleagues and moviegoers with labors of love such as "Miami Vice" (2006) and the upcoming "Public Enemies" (2009)--a period mob movie that is so pristine in its picture, it looks like an HD History Channel special (judging from the theatrical trailer recently released). Where's the film-look? Where's the glamour? Where's the mystique?

Perhaps Mann found in Ali's at times bleak--if not wholly colloquial--vernacular, a sort of profound beauty. Ali would just tell it like it is. Mann obviously likes to show the world in his films, in a magic-less way evoking gritty realism. In other words, Mann shows it "like it is." But yet again, I digress.

It's easy to love the film to great extents now, with the luxury of the DVD, where you can revisit certain segments and fight scenes (notably the one against Sonny Liston which seems to cast a shadow over the ending fight with Foreman). But in case you don't have several hours to dedicate to this underrated whopper of a movie, at least watch the opening sequence/montage which triumphantly captures every theme, prejudice, aesthetic look, performance and overall celebration I think the film represents to Mann. And if you catch yourself quietly taken away by an image or a movement, well that's just the beginning.

Watch that sequence: "ALI" OPENING MONTAGE