Malcolm X (1992)

User Review

• 

  Barneyonmovies

  8 / 10

  WHAT I LIKED: Violent oppressors love to blame the oppressed for resisting them, and that's what Spike Lee's Malcolm X biopic is all about.
  
  The film starts by showing the oppression in question first-hand, as the KKK terrorise young Malcolm Little's family and murder his father and his teacher tells him he can't be a lawyer because he's black. After childhood, we pick up the story when he becomes involved in organised crime, but then he gets radicalised in prison by a member of the Nation of Islam who opens Malcolm's eyes to his own people's oppression and the need to fight it.
  
  The rest of the film is then about his rise as a resistance preacher under the Nation of Islam, and the plots against him both from within his own religious group, and from the media and government. Despite his message about resisting power and striving for equality, he's painted as a violent extremist out to upset a supposedly peaceful societal order - an order that we've already seen is extremely violent in itself.
  
  That's a tale as old as time of course, but the way the film paints it so unflinchingly - from the early reactions to Malcolm's speeches to his assassination orchestrated by the CIA - is both admirable and heart breaking. And that's only emphasised by a powerful and layered performance by Denzel Washington who brings humanity to the man behind the legacy.
  
  WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: At three hours twenty minutes, it does spend a lot of time meandering with world-building with long scenes establishing the time period and tangential sequences about certain periods in Malcolm's life.
  
  VERDICT: Spike Lee's 'Malcolm X,' paints its central character with all his layers, but ultimately as a resistance fighter facing off against oppression.

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