Plot: Malcolm is a young boy who wants to fit in with the white folks. He ends up a petty criminal and once caught, he has to serve time in jail. One of his fellow prisoners converts him and introduces him to Islam. Malcolm educates himself and becomes a spiritual leader for the black community, but in doing so he makes a lot of enemies.
Watches
December 07, 2024
Spike Lee is a more than logical fit for a biopic on Malcolm X, but where Do the Right Thing was an energetic and sprawling take on racism (and the black communities in the USA), Malcolm X is very much a more traditional biopic. And as such, it is quite dull and way too long for its own good.
Washington is good and Malcolm X is a figure worthy of a biopic, it's just that Lee's direction felt generic and uninspired. There's enough material here to warrant the long runtime, but the presentation is so bland that I wish the film had been half as long. Not one of Lee's better films.