Malcolm X Details

To describe a film as “worthy” is to damn it with faint praise. But, as much as one admires the ambition of this biographical drama from Spike Lee, it is surprisingly conventional and, at times, downright dull: one longs for the hectoring quality of Lee's other pictures and, indeed, Lee's public interviews. Instead, we have reams and reams of speeches, and Denzel Washington as the black militant leader of the 1960s (the fire to Martin Luther King's water) copes with them as best he can. Washington looks impressive and he has undoubted charisma, like Malcolm X himself, but he's stuck in a huge, flipside national epic that lumbers on through the decades, continents and events for more than three hours. Perhaps Lee was subdued by the big budget, by the need for a white audience as well as a black one; perhaps, too, he was overawed by his subject. But this picture, as interesting as it is, fades beside the contentious brilliance of Oliver Stone's JFK and Nixon.

"...Washington's great performance dominates....MALCOLM X conveys its subject's magnetism and lifelong evolution, while forever synergizing its lead performer and his role..." -- 4 out of 4 stars