Lost for many years due to legal and financial hassles, When We Were Kings was finally released in 1996 and immediately became a hit. Why? Because of one name: Muhammad Ali.
Ali was born on the 17th of January 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. His father was Cassius Clay Sr and his mother Odessa Clay. They named their first born Cassius Marcellus Clay II. While not well off, Ali's parents managed to maintain financial independence and keep food on the table. This was just as well as according to reports the young Ali had a healthy appetite!
Ali became interested in boxing after his brand new Schwinn bicycle was stolen while he and a friend were at the Louisville Home show. The distraught young man was told to see Joe Martin, a policemen, who ran the nearby Columbia Gym. Seeing a spark of interest in Ali's eyes, Martin gave him an application form to join the gym which he did and the rest, as they say, is history.
| "Muhammad Ali: I'm so mean I make medicine sick" |
Muhammad Ali is perhaps the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time but he is more than that. He is also one of the most important figures of the turbulent 1960's and 70's. He infuriated the white establishment with his brash outspoken ways and fell foul of them when he refused to serve in Vietnam on religious grounds ('I ain't got no quarrel with the Viet Cong' he is quoted as saying). He was stripped of his title, had his boxing license revoked and was imprisoned. It took over three years of lobbying to get his boxing license back.
He had ties with the controversial black activist Malcom X as well as the black muslim movement both dangerous to be associated with at that time and yet he remained firmly in the public spotlight supporting equal rights and urging black people to develop their own sense of self.
The 'Rumble In The Jungle' was the brain child of then upcoming fight promoter Don King. He pictured the event as not only the major title fight of the year but also a celebration of black america and its music. Huge names such as B. B. King, James Brown, The Crusaders and The Spinners agreed to take part in this celebration of black talent. King managed to get the then dictator of Zaire, Mobuto Sese Seko, to put up 10 million dollars for the fight prize pool as well as build a new stadium for the staging of the fight, the pay back coming from international attention and foreign currency.
Along with the hundreds of performers, staff, helpers, managers and the fighters came Leon Gast and his crew to film the event. The footage presented in this documentary is fantastic. It gives us a close up, behind the scenes look at one of the greatest upsets in sporting history as well as one of the most colourful characters of all time. We also see the emergence of the most powerful man in boxing, Don King. Watch and enjoy, I did.
The transfer presented on this disc is 16x9 enhanced and has an aspect ratio of approximately 1.78:1.
This transfer is perfectly acceptable given its humble origins. This feature contains a mixture of colour footage filmed during the 'Rumble in the Jungle' plus colour and black and white footage from other sources and other times.
The image is not what you would call sharp but it is always clear and a surprising amount of detail is often revealed. The colour level is fine but the colours themselves are a little 'odd'. I should stress that this is not a problem with the transfer rather it is a source material issue. Keep in mind that the source film for this transfer is now over 26 years old and so some distortion in the colour is not unexpected. The newer footage, taken with Spike Lee, Norman Mailer and George Plimpton in 1995/96, is spot on with natural colour and good skin tones.
I didn't notice any MPEG artefacts and Film-To-Video artefacts are almost non-existant. I did notice some telecine wobble but this is minor and easily overlooked.
Film artefacts are common and noticeable as is film grain but this is documentary footage taken in less than ideal conditions and so this is not surprising.
The audio on this disc is Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded at a bitrate of 192kbs.
The audio is always clear and while the fidelity of the soundtrack is clearly dated it is still more than acceptable. I could always understand what was being said and I noticed no sync issues.
Surround activity is, as you would expect, limited but the subwoofer does get some work during some of the concert footage.
Once again, this is a documentary originally filmed in 1974 and so one should not expect too much.
