I’ve seen a lot of films about boxing and boxers. Most of them were pretty good. Big George Foreman wasn’t one of them though. Every big-name boxer in the last fifty years or so has gotten a film about them so why not George Foreman? His story is actually very interesting. It’s just the way it’s told that isn’t very good. And the performances weren’t very good either.

George Foreman (Khris Davis) grew up poor, living in a little shack in the 5th ward with his single mother Nancy Foreman (Sonja Sohn), and brothers and sister in Houston Texas. He was always getting into a lot of fights as a boy so he ended up going to the Job Corps in California and did the same. While there he learns how to box with the help of Doc Broadus (Forest Whitaker) He trains him and he ends up going to Mexico Summer Olympics in 1968. He wins the Gold medal and his boxing career is off and running. And later wins the Heavyweight Champion of the World vs Joe Fraser, This is only part of the story though as the saying goes.

Besides the members of the cast I already mentioned there are a few more supporting roles I haven’t mentioned yet. Some of them are Desmond (John Magaro) George’s Money Man, Paula Wife 1 (Shein Mompremier) Howard Cosell (Matthew Glave) the famous announcer with a few great calls, Muhammed Ali (Sullivan Jones) one of if not the greatest athlete of all time, Mary Joan 2nd Wife (Jasmine Matthews) and Mary Foreman his sister (Erica Tazel) All these actors did the best that they could to help bring this man’s story to life.

The film depicts a lot of Foreman’s life including many of his most famous fights including the “Rumble In The Jungle ” in Zaire, Africa where he lost the title famously to Muhammed Ali. The filmmaker George Tillman Jr. got some big-name announcers of today to do voice-overs for a few of the fights including Adnan Virk, Robert Florez, and Jim Lamply. A very famous boxing announcer from his years doing fights on HBO & Showtime. All the calls of the various fights were fine. It was the boxing that was not very good in this movie. It was slow-paced and very choppy. These were not good boxing matches at all in this film I’m sorry to say.

The Blu-ray doesn’t have much in the way of special features. It is a Blu-ray and DVD combo pack that comes with a digital code that is redeemable on Vudu. A couple of special features include  Big George Foreman: A Look at the Making of the Film, Toe to Toe: Foreman vs Ali a Gag Reel, and deleted scenes. Not a lot of special features but a few.

A couple of things I did like about this movie was the voice-over narration by Davis playing Foreman. He broke up the paint-by-numbers storytelling with interesting narration. The other is the film used a lot of blues music interspersed throughout it to a nice effect. These blues songs added a nice element to the film and Foreman’s story.

Big George Foreman does an OK job of depicting Foreman’s life. It’s pretty much a paint-by-numbers sports biopic.  Other boxing films have done similar things much better. The cast is fine and the voiceover on the fights is OK but the main part of the film that failed it is the actual fights in the movie. This was not very good at all. Foreman’s life deserved much better than this. He had an inspirational life which was quite surprising. This film didn’t do a good job of portraying it to the level he deserved.

2 ½ stars

Dan Skop Allen