Khris Davis In Boxing Biopic – Deadline

So often thought of primarily as the big lug who was so dramatically dispatched by Muhammad Ali in the famous “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire in 1974, George Foreman is the main event in Big George Foreman. While there is plenty of boxing here to satisfy sports fans, the film is mild-mannered and genial to a fault as it charts the life of a dirt-poor Texas kid with a devastating punch whose public image transformed over the years from hulking bogeyman to that of a good-natured businessman and man of God.

Ali was such a commanding, entertaining and (mostly) adored worldwide figure, from his emergence as the self-anointed “greatest” to his ultimate status as one of the most beloved and admired men on the planet, that it isn’t easy to watch him take a back seat here to a younger but less charismatic figure onscreen. Eventually, if you like boxing and are willing to accept this as a sanitized and truncated version of the full story, it’s not hard to sit back and enjoy the eventful aspects of the big man’s life and his engaging personality, even if the film is inescapably a mere gloss on the full story. As there’s much to Foreman’s life that there isn’t room for here, it’s plausible to think that a miniseries might have more comfortably told the tale in a fuller, more multifaceted way.

Written by Frank Baldwin (Cold Pursuit) and George Tillman Jr (Soul Food), who also directs, the film suggests at the outset that the teenage George might very likely have come to no good as small-time criminal had his potential as a boxer not been noticed by a perceptive scout and trainer, Doc Broadus (Forest Whitaker), who gets him off the streets and into the gym. “You’ve got a punch like I’ve never seen,” the old pro confides, and he soon has the kid working out and getting used to the ring.

Prior to Foreman’s arrival on the scene, the heavyweight division had been dominated by Ali until his title was yanked in June 1967 for refusing induction into the military, as well as being sentenced to five years in federal prison. He managed to maneuver out of that, but he was nonetheless barred from boxing for nearly four of his prime years, during which time Ernie Terrell, Joe Frazier and, finally, Foreman stood atop the heavyweight division.

Physically, Frazier was incredibly intimidating and, at least for a while, not well liked by fans who were biding their time until the return of Ali, who flummoxed Foreman in that long-awaited 1974 title fight. Boxing fans will certainly enjoy the ring action on display, though there isn’t much of it, and interested parties will have to go home and consult the record books to trace the overlapping careers these three great fighters as well as others.

You’ll also have to check your sources to glean details about these guys’ private lives. For a film about Foreman, in particular, it would seem like…