Gensanportal - Mindanao News Blog

The simple brilliance of Thrilla in Manila, a documentary premiering on HBO Saturday, lies in its point of view: The story of the third fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier has been told countless times, but almost always with the assumption that Ali is the story's hero. Thrilla tells the tale from the perspective of Frazier, and that alone makes it a unique and impressive film.

More than three decades after their third and final meeting in the ring, Frazier still feels anger and bitterness toward Ali, who derided him as an "Uncle Tom" and a "gorilla." Frazier even suggests that Ali's struggle with Parkinson's Syndrome is some kind of karmic payback for the way Ali treated him in the 1970s.

But while that lingering resentment might make Frazier sound like an old kook, Thrilla is more nuanced than that, and it also shows Frazier as a dignified man who deserves to be considered a boxing hero. Frazier will never be the international icon that Ali is, but he was every bit the boxer that Ali was, and Thrilla succeeds in portraying him as such.

And in a demonstration of just how good documentary filmmaking can be, Thrilla also succeeds in building suspense as it reaches its climax even though, of course, we know how it ends. Through old footage of the fight and new interviews with the people involved, Thrilla recreates the intensity of the Frazier-Ali war.

When the fight was over, we're told, Ali approached Frazier's son and told him not to take anything he said personally, that his hurtful words were just an attempt to hype the fight. Frazier didn't accept that apology then and he doesn't now. Thrilla helps us see, for the first time, why Frazier never got over the fight.

For more boxing news, including coverage of the Manny Pacquiao-Ricky Hatton fight, follow me on Twitter.

Tags: Joe+Frazier, JoeFrazier, Muhammad+Ali, MuhammadAli