Ken Burns' new "Muhammad Ali" docuseries is worth going the distance
SalonWatching "Muhammad Ali" makes a person appreciate the serious duty Ken Burns undertook in making it. Among the best are Leon Gast's Oscar winning 1996 documentary "When We Were Kings" and "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali, " Antoine Fuqua's excellent 2019 HBO documentary. All of this is to say that Burns doesn't reveal much in "Muhammad Ali" you don't already know, whether because you've watched these and other efforts, or because for a very long time Ali seemed to pop up everywhere – whether he was selling watches or his own legend by way of a '70s-era Saturday morning cartoon. "Muhammad Ali" rumbles with all the usual Burns signatures, such as enlisting Keith David to narrate again, as he did for "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson" and Jackie Robinson.