‘The Greatest’ Prime Video Review: Building the Myth of Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali’s life has been told a thousand different ways. There have been feature films, documentaries and countless books about him, ranging from the strictly sporting to the anecdotal and the sociopolitical. The Greatest, the fictional series created by Ben Watkins, doesn’t set out to reinvent the subject. Its ambition is to go deeper instead: into the details, the everyday routines and the personal conflicts that gradually turned Cassius Clay into Muhammad Ali. Nor does it attempt to be revisionist. When in doubt, it chooses to «print the legend,» presenting the familiar mythology to a new generation that may not be all that familiar with the life of what was arguably the greatest boxer of all time.

The series is so meticulous in its approach that the entire first season covers only the early years of his career, suggesting that this project —which counts Michael B. Jordan and Jay-Z among its producers and has the blessing of Ali’s estate— is designed to unfold over several seasons. It doesn’t even go back to his childhood. Instead, the story begins with the fight in which the then 20-year-old Cassius Clay competes for the gold medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics. We won’t reveal where the season ends, but given the level of detail devoted to each episode, viewers will quickly realize that it isn’t going to get very far beyond that point.

Clay (played by the impressive, relatively unknown Jaalen Best) wins gold in Rome and returns to Louisville, Kentucky, where he lives with his parents and brother, as a local celebrity. Everyone wants to see him, meet him and get close to him. The city even organizes a parade to celebrate his victory and give him a hero’s welcome. But in an era of deeply entrenched racial segregation, very little has actually changed. Beneath all the pomp and circumstance, he is still just another Black man who can be turned away from a restaurant or displayed in the homes of wealthy white people like some kind of trophy.

The series gradually explores this tension at the heart of Clay’s personality: his determination to succeed, become a professional boxer and win the heavyweight championship, alongside his growing awareness that the world around him is rife with injustice. His mother, Odessa (Dana Gourrier), seems able to endure the daily humiliations surrounding her, while his father, Cassius Sr. (Omari Hardwick), responds to them in a much more confrontational way, frequently losing his temper and taking out his anger on his own family. Somewhere between these two opposing influences, the boxer’s personality begins to take shape, until the young man starts making increasingly risky decisions on his own.

Much of the first season revolves around his search for a trainer (which, as everyone knows, or should know, eventually leads him to Angelo Dundee, played here by Giovanni Ribisi), finding a lawyer to advise him before signing his first professional contract and, once he turns pro, choosing the opponents for his fights. The various stages, obstacles and setbacks in that evolution are presented alongside the parallel careers of two other great heavyweight champions: Floyd Patterson and Sonny Liston.

The Greatest isn’t a series for anyone looking for a quick overview of the boxer’s life. Eight episodes, each running close to an hour, to cover less than five years in Muhammad Ali’s life make it clear that this is a show for viewers looking for what is commonly known as a deep dive. In fact, with just a couple of exceptions, most of the major milestones of his life fall outside the scope of this first season. That narrow focus allows the series to spend more time exploring the contradictions within its central character, something Best conveys particularly well in a performance that gradually takes him from the young, ambitious Clay to the Ali we all recognize.

Those willing to immerse themselves in the world the series creates (an almost entire episode is devoted to the celebrations following his Olympic gold medal, just to give you an idea) will find a fairly conventional but absorbing account of Ali’s early life. Don’t expect a radically different perspective or a provocative reassessment of his legacy. This is an officially sanctioned production, after all, and its main purpose, more than anything else, is to elevate the legend until it becomes something carved in marble.