Destiny can take your best friend as an instrument to cause you harm and your worst enemy to do you good, says Muhammad Ali a few minutes into this absorbing Netflix documentary. He is referring to black activist Malcolm X, who had fallen out with Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam, a major force in the culture wars that rocked the United States in the 1960s.
“Judas betrayed Jesus. Malcolm X betrayed Elijah Muhammad,” he adds, in case his meaning wasn’t clear. What Ali didn’t realise was the terrible irony that time would bestow on these words. This brutal repudiation of would-be saviour Malcolm X, by a man he considered his “brother”, would be a source of pain to both parties.
