Malcolm X

The film is inspirational and educational - and it is also entertaining, as movies must be before they can be anything else.

Mr. Lee means for Malcolm X to be an epic, and it is in its concerns and its physical scope. In Denzel Washington it also has a fine actor who does for Malcolm X what Ben Kingsley did for “Gandhi.” [18 November 1992]

Mr. Lee means for Malcolm X to be an epic, and it is in its concerns and its physical scope. In Denzel Washington it also has a fine actor who does for Malcolm X what Ben Kingsley did for “Gandhi.” [18 November 1992]

The film is inspirational and educational - and it is also entertaining, as movies must be before they can be anything else.

A spiritually enriching testament to the human capacity for change -- and surely Spike Lee's most universally appealing film.

A spiritually enriching testament to the human capacity for change -- and surely Spike Lee's most universally appealing film.

Lee's biography of the slain civil rights leader treats Malcolm, not as a political rallying point, but as a fully rounded individual whose life defies reduction to symbolic status.

Lee's finest, most unabashed labor of love.

Lee's finest, most unabashed labor of love.

The picture comes up short in several departments, notably in pacing and in giving a strong sense of why this man became such a legend.