Freedom Road (1979)

          First off, the most interesting thing about this epic-length historical telefilm is the man playing the leading role. Boxing legend Muhammad Ali didn’t act often, and he usually played himself, so Freedom Road represents his only proper dramatic performance. To get the bad news out of the way, he’s not impressive, delivering lines in a listless, mush-mouthed style that makes him seem drunk or tired in most scenes. Ali completely fails to channel his signature physical grace and verbal dexterity into a vivid performance, so even though he has a few sincere moments when the context of intense scenes creates meaning, Ali demonstrates the wisdom of his choice to step away from acting for 20 years following this project. Happily, there’s good news. The novelty of seeing Ali act remains strong even as Freedom Road sprawls across four hours; the storyline about freed slaves trying to enter American political life in the post-Civil War South is interesting; and the folks surrounding Ali, both in front of and behind the camera, deliver smoothly professional work. Therefore, while there’s something inherently false about Freedom Road—which is based upon a novel rather than historical facts—worthy themes prevail.

          Ali plays Gideon Jackson, a slave who left his North Carolina plantation to fight for the Union Army. Emancipation happens while Jackson is still in service, so after the war, he returns home to his wife and children, hopeful that life after slavery will be better. It is, barely. Later, when politicians decree that black citizens should have roles in state government, Jackson gets tapped for a position. He bonds with a new friend, educated Northern black politician Francis Cardoza (Ron O’Neal), and he clashes with a new enemy, dogged racist Stephen Holms (Edward Herrmann), who sizes up Jackson as a potentially formidable enemy and eventually rallies the KKK to combat Jackson’s nascent political movement. Over the course of the eventful story, Jackson forms an unlikely friendship with a white farmer, Abner Lait (Kris Kristofferson), and navigates a fraught relationship with President Ulysses S. Grant (John McLiam) upon becoming a U.S. Senator. Informing Jackson’s journey is his achievement of literacy and his gradual shift from innate cunning to political sophistication.

          Given that Freedom Road began its life as a novel by Howard Fast, who also wrote the book that became Spartacus (1960), it’s no surprise that the story evolves into a full-blown war, with freed slaves under siege by ruthless Southerners. Yet even though Freedom Road would have infinitely more meaning if the story had really happened, the film’s progressive politics feel genuine and heartfelt, and the drama works more often than it doesn’t. Helping the story along is narration spoken by the great Ossie Davis. Still, there are many reasons why Freedom Road failed to make a big splash when it was originally broadcast. Ali disappoints, the story is fake history, and the archetypal rebel-hero structure feels convenient and familiar. Within those diminished parameters, Freedom Road has many exciting, insightful, and thought-provoking moments.

Freedom Road: FUNKY

Money Talks (1972)

Following the release of his sleazy feature debut, What Do You Say to a Naked Lady? (1970), producer/director/host Allen Funt made one more attempt at shifting his small-screen Candid Camera franchise to the world’s cinemas. Alas, while Money Talks is less inherently exploitive than its predecessor, the rambling quasi-documentary offers only the slimmest of rewards for viewers who trudge through all 81 minutes. Even more so than the previous film, Money Talks is an extended Candid Camera episode, featuring hidden-camera footage, staged gags during which actors coached by Funt interact with unsuspecting passersby, and man-on-the-street interviews. All of the material concerns modern Americans’ relationship with money—those who crave it, those who shun it, and so on. This is a worthy topic for serious study, to be sure, but with Funt at the helm, serious study is not the order of the day. Rather, the film features gags such as an attractive woman standing on a New York City street with a dollar bill pinned to the seat of her jeans; Funt uses a hidden camera to see which people try to grab the cash, which people try to grab the girl, and which people kindly inform the young woman of her situation. The novelty of the bit lasts all of about 30 seconds, but the sequence drags on repetitiously for several minutes. And so it goes with other vignettes, like the set-up featuring Muhammad Ali pretending he’s too cheap to pay for a C.O.D. package, much to the consternation of folks tasked with delivering the item to the heavyweight champ. Probably the most interesting sequence involves Funt talking to hippies about their counterculture attitudes toward currency; it’s interesting to watch straight-laced Funt’s brain shut down when shaggy kids say naïvely idealistic things like, “I believe in working for mankind, to keep mankind going—I just believe in working on life.” Unfortunately, the film’s credible content is outweighed by crap including montages set to horrifically bad original songs. For instance, during a sequence for which Funt rigged a parking meter to spew coins in order to trigger reactions from pedestrians, a singer croons the following inanities on the soundtrack: “He hits the jackpot and nickels fall like rain/ He bends down to pick them up but his pants can’t stand the strain.” Any questions why there wasn’t another Candid Camera flick after this one?

Money Talks: FUNKY

a.k.a. Cassius Clay (1970)

The beginning of the ’70s was an ideal time to make a documentary about heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, who by that point had discarded his “slave name” Cassius Clay and become a controversial activist. When a.k.a. Cassius Clay was made, the fighter was in the midst of battles with sports authorities and the U.S. government to get his boxing license reinstated and to have his refusal to serve in the military on religious grounds validated. He was also pursuing so many alternate income sources that the documentary opens with footage of Ali’s failed attempt to star in a race-themed Broadway musical. Yet while the subject matter is fascinating and the timing is great, the film itself is a bore. In addition to being padded with clips of Ali’s legendary ’60s fights, the rambling a.k.a. Cassius Clay stumbles through such contrived episodes as Ali chatting with famed boxing trainer Cus D’Amato while they review newsreels of past fighting legends, such as Joe Louis, and discuss whether Ali could have beaten these fighters had their careers coincided. (Predictably, Ali claims he could beat any heavyweight who ever lived.) Easily half of the film’s running time comprises recycled footage, and the fresh stuff is weak. Worse, the whole picture is scored with cheesy funk music straight out of a ’70s porno, and narrator Richard Kiley (who periodically appears onscreen, speaking directly to the camera), repeatedly refers to Ali as “boy” (as in, “the promoters knew they had their boy”), which makes the project feel like a relic from a racially insensitive era. Plus, anyone even slightly familiar with Ali already knows every major fact this documentary presents. So, while a.k.a. Cassius Clay is not awful, per se—it’s basically accurate and basically coherent—the film is among the least inspired recitations of a great American tale.

a.k.a. Cassius Clay: LAME

The Greatest (1977)

          As a keepsake depicting the heyday of one of modern sports’ most celebrated figures, The Greatest is priceless, because boxer Muhammad Ali plays himself in a brisk overview of his illustrious career’s most notable moments. As a movie, The Greatest is, well, not the greatest. Setting aside the issue of Ali’s amateurish acting, since he never claimed thespian skills among his gifts, the picture is so flat and oversimplified that it’s more of a tribute reel than an actual film. At its worst, The Greatest is outright ridiculous. For instance, the opening-credits montage features Ali jogging while George Benson croons a maudlin version of “The Greatest Love of All,” which was composed for this movie even though most people know the song as a Whitney Houston hit from the ’80s. The problem is that the main lyric, “Learning to love yourself/is the greatest love of all,” doesn’t really apply to the former Cassius Clay, whose bravado is as famous as his pugilistic skill; for this man, self-love was never in short supply.

          Nonetheless, it seems the goal of this picture was to portray Cassius/Muhammad as a simple man trying to find his identity while he clashed with racist white promoters and, during his Vietnam-era battle against being drafted into military service, the U.S. government. Unfortunately, the picture doesn’t dig deep enough to feel believable as an examination of the inner man, especially since most of the events depicted in the picture are familiar to everyone, from Ali’s friendship with Malcolm X (James Earl Jones) to his conversion to Islam. The movie’s credibility is damaged further by the filmmakers’ use of actual footage from Ali’s biggest bouts: The movie frequently cuts from shots of a well-fed 1977 Ali to clips of the same man looking leaner in earlier years, even though the disparate shots are supposed to be contiguous.

          Accentuating the cheesy approach are distracting cameo appearances by Jones, Robert Duvall, David Huddleston, Ben Johnson, and Paul Winfield, all of whom breeze in and out of the movie very quickly. (Ernest Borgnine has a somewhat more substantial role as trainer Angelo Dundee.) FYI, cult-fave director Monte Hellman provided uncredited assistance during post-production after the death of the film’s credited director, reliable journeyman Tom Gries; Hellman performed similar duties two years later on the misbegotten thriller Avalanche Express, joining that production after director Mark Robson died.

The Greatest: LAME