Unusually rich, absorbing and often brilliant film-making, an epic deserving of the description. But that doesn't stop it from being worryingly ambiguous.

| Dec 14, 2023

The film has no psychological depth and not much sense of history. It takes a purely surface view of people and events.

| Dec 14, 2023

The movie is long -- 202 minutes -- but Lee earns every tick of the clock, illuminating the many developmental moments in Malcolm X’s personality.

| Original Score: A- | Oct 9, 2023

| Original Score: A | Sep 7, 2011

Lee's film suffers from message over substance and is slightly tedious as a result.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 6, 2010

Spike Lee has made a disappointingly conventional and sluggish film in Malcolm X.

Full Review | Jan 6, 2010

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.

| Jan 6, 2010

Lee and company have performed a powerful service: they have brought Malcolm X very much to life again, both as man and myth.

| Oct 18, 2008

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.

| Sep 23, 2008

It plays surprisingly safe as a solidly crafted trawl through the didactic/hagiographic conventions of the mainstream biopic.

| Feb 9, 2006

Finds Lee's tendencies towards gadflyish social outrage folded into the fabric of the typically reactionary biopic genre.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 8, 2005

An ambitious, tough, seriously considered biographical film that, with honor, eludes easy characterization.

| May 20, 2003

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

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 1, 2000

Lee has chosen a big subject and, with his quirky talent, has done it superb justice.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 1, 2000

Though at times it borders on the hagiographic, Malcolm X is remarkably faithful to the essence of the man -- his anger, his sly wit, his perpetual growth.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 1, 2000

Lee's movie, despite good intentions, does not inspire any visceral realities. It simply is too superficial, too theatrically poised without the hard-edge that could have made it a masterpiece.

| Jan 1, 2000

This is an extraordinary life, and Spike Lee has told it in an extraordinary film.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 1, 2000

| Original Score: A | Nov 18, 1992