Alright, let’s start here.  I fully acknowledge I’m WAY too invested emotionally in this one.  So I’m not going to try to tell you this is the ‘best’ of the several great Ali documentaries.  It’s easily one of my favorites though.

And why?  Because THIS is the one that finally tries to go into detail about ‘the Exile Years’: everyone knows Ali gave up part of his prime because he wouldn’t go to Vietnam.  But whereas pretty much all the other stories give you that one line summary in the context of his athletic career as the Greatest, ‘The Trials of Muhammad Ali’ goes in the other direction, using the boxing career as the dressing in the story of this uniquely American life.

So a lot of the basics of his athletic life is the setup: the boy from Louisville, Olympic gold medalist, supreme confidence from the beginning.  While this…