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By Dan Leone

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IT'S NEVER EASY to turn the lives of our species' finest into fine art, sculpting the tour of highs and lows that make up a life into something resembling "important" entertainment. Scoring a coup in the casting of the objet d'biopic can fuse both actor and figure into one inseparable icon (try picturing T.E. Lawrence without thinking of Peter O'Toole), but if that's the only ace in the hole, well ... remember the Carrey-oke Kaufman debacle Man on the Moon? Somewhere between those poles of cinememoir lies Ali, an epic look at the people's pugilistic champ that manages to cast jug-eared fresh prince-movie star Will Smith as the shit-talkin' heavyweight and still score more than a few body blows. All of the sports hero's greatest hits, literally and figuratively, are here: the 22-year-old Cassius Clay's victory over Sonny Liston, the renouncement of his "slave name" for an honorable Muslim moniker, the verbal sparring matches with Howard Cosell (an unrecognizable and dead-on Jon Voight), being stripped of his title for refusing to be drafted, and the climactic "Rumble in the Jungle" bout against George Foreman in Zaire that made him a world champion once more. Director Michael Mann (The Insider) uses his trademark icy sheen and fastidious attention to let you know immediately who's calling the shots; occasionally, he throws in the odd conspiracy thriller element just to prove that, famous subject or no, it's still a "Mann" movie. But it's Smith's show all the way, and he takes on the fighter's bulky frame and silky smooth monotone with a grace that dares any doubters to step into the ring. Despite the star's top-notch channeling of "the greatest," Ali never exactly floats like a butterfly or stings like a bee. For a tepid biopic, however, the sheer egomaniacal scope it shares with its subject still lends it the air of a monumental rope-a-dope. (David Fear)