Today’s mail included a trio of titles from Germany, including the newest addition to the shop’s inventory, Jacques Tourneur’s “Anne of the Indies.” Also in tow were restocks of Lance Hool’s “Steel Dawn” and the theatrical cut of Michael Mann’s “Ali.”
Well-known for tinkering with his films, Michael Mann has actually done three versions of “Ali,” his Will Smith-starring Muhammad Ali biopic. The first is the 2001 theatrical cut that runs 157 minutes, which appears on the German Blu-ray available at 4xblu. The second version, dubbed the “Director’s Cut,” was a 165 minute version Mann put together for cable tv that excised some of the footage from the original and added nearly 15 minutes of scenes that were previously unseen. That version of “Ali” came out on DVD in 2004 but, as of this writing, has never been given a Blu-ray release. Version #3, aka the “Commemorative Edition” (which Mann assembled for the film’s domestic Blu-ray debut in January of 2017), clocks in at 152 minutes. This edition, which was created in the wake of Ali’s passing in June of 2016, either reduced or removed fights from the original cut, electing to emphasize Ali’s struggles outside of the ring. As Mann put it, “[I]n 2016 what I really wanted to see was somewhat different, which is that the biggest adversary Ali had was political.”