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Movie Review
| Thrilla in Manila. Dir. and prod. by John Dower. HBO Documentary Films, 2009. 90 mins. (HBO Documentary Films, http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/thrillainmanila/index.html).
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| An engaging documentary, Thrilla in Manila revisits the famously brutal 1975 prizefight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. It was their third and final bout against one another—Frazier won the first in 1971, Ali took the 1974 rematch—and both men exhibited tremendous punching and will power. Despite being exhausted by the heat (it was nearly 104 degrees in Manila's packed Araneta Coliseum) and Frazier's relentlessness, Ali won after Frazier's trainer Eddie Futch stopped the fight before the fifteenth round because his man could no longer see and thus protect himself. Ali retained his world heavyweight championship, even though he could barely stand after the fight and had to be escorted from the ring. |
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Boxing fans, journalists, and historians have long thought of Ali-Frazier III as a classic, "profound human drama of the highest order," according to the sportswriter Richard O'Brien, an exemplar of the sport's virtues: strength, skill, intelligence, courage, and tenacity ("A Study in Pain," Sports Illustrated, April 13, 2009, p. 18). "This one," Red Smith of the New York Times wrote the day after the fight, "ranks up there with the most memorable heavyweight matches of our time" ("It Takes Two to Make a Fight," New York Times, Oct. 2, 1975, p. 62). |
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John Dower's gripping film reveals that the fight in Manila was more than memorable; it was almost tragic, with each man punishing the other close to death. The film also argues that the fight was more than just two talented, well-conditioned, prideful African American men pummeling each other for the voyeuristic pleasure of others and millions of dollars; it was also about a friendship betrayed and the politics of race at a volatile cultural moment. |
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Ali has been an almost universally recognized icon for forty years, widely hailed for his athletic accomplishments, charisma, and principled refusal, on religious grounds, to be inducted into the military in 1967. He has also been the subject of scores of books and several films, including the Academy Award–winning documentary When We Were Kings (1996), which chronicles the "rumble in the jungle," Ali's surprising 1974 win over the champion George Foreman in Zaire. Frazier, despite also having been the world heavyweight champion, is less well remembered and perhaps less well understood. "This is the story of the other man in Manila," explains Thrilla in Manila's narrator, the actor Liev Schreiber, meaning Frazier, "a man unable to let go of the bitterest and most intense sporting rivalry ever seen." |
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To tell that story, Thrilla in Manila draws on knowledgeable "talking heads" such as Ali's former cornerman Ferdie Pacheco, Frazier confidant Butch Lewis, boxing writer and Ali biographer Thomas Hauser, and Marvis Frazier, Joe's dutiful son, among others, most of whom provide useful commentary. (That said, the absence of Angelo Dundee, Ali's respected former trainer, is almost as conspicuous as Ali's.) The film also effectively uses a wide range of primary documents (photographs, newsreel footage, magazine covers), is carefully edited, and has an energetic, evocative soundtrack (even if sometimes the driving percussion in the background feels too "tribal"). |
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