My favorite thing about this film is that Mann assumes that his audience is somewhat intelligent. Instead of placing his characters in a historical setting with all that entails (see, for example, “Seabiscuit” with its pages of explanatory script aimed at the 5% of the population who has never heard of the Depression), he sets the movie in a contemporary setting. Of course, it takes place in the ‘60s, but the film is seen through the eyes of the people who lived through it, so you don’t need explanations on who Malcolm X is or why people are rioting. Muhammad Ali was a man of his time, and the movie is set in his time, not in 2002 looking backwards.