Malcolm X Reviews
Top CriticSpike Lee has made a disappointingly conventional and sluggish film in Malcolm X.
Benefits from a lively lead performance by the miscast Denzel Washington but doesn't come within light years of the book, one of the greatest American autobiographies.
Lee sketches Malcolm's life colorfully, if by the numbers. But he falls victim to the danger of movie biography: he elevates Malcolm's importance until the vital historical context is obscured.
Common Sense Media
Insightful and well-rounded portrait of Malcolm X.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Slant Magazine
Finds Lee's tendencies towards gadflyish social outrage folded into the fabric of the typically reactionary biopic genre.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
This is an extraordinary life, and Spike Lee has told it in an extraordinary film.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Nolan's Pop Culture Review
Denzel brings the legend to life.
| Original Score: 4/5
eFilmCritic.com
Just a bit on the looong side, but it's also one of Lee's most complete and commanding films.
| Original Score: 4/5
Flipside Movie Emporium
Unfocused and too long by half, but Washington's performance is hypnotic.
| Original Score: 3/5
rec.arts.movies.reviews
The film does say a lot about Malcolm, both positive and negative, but not nearly as much as one would expect for a film almost twice the length of most feature films.
Full Review
| Original Score: +1 out of -4..+4
eFilmCritic.com
The point of Lee's engrossing, scathing epic ... is that as long as racism lives, the spirit of Malcolm will -- must -- live.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Combustible Celluloid
The perfect combination of epic and personal, intimate and spectacular.
Empire Magazine
Lee's film suffers from message over substance and is slightly tedious as a result.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Film4
Visually and dramatically, Lee pulls out all the stops, but it's Washington's performance that really energizes the film, and he's an exhilarating presence throughout.
It plays surprisingly safe as a solidly crafted trawl through the didactic/hagiographic conventions of the mainstream biopic.
